


If It's the Last Thing That I Do

by Gabu



Category: Gravity Falls
Genre: Adult Dipper Pines, Adult Mabel Pines, Amnesia, Brain Damage, Concussions, Drug Dealing, Drug Use, Emotional/Psychological Abuse, Flashbacks, Gun Violence, Implied/Referenced Drug Use, Memory Loss, Psychological Trauma, Runaway, Second Person, Self-Harm, Self-Hatred, Sexual Assault, Suicidal Thoughts, What-If, negative self-talk, physical assault, someone help dipdop
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-24
Updated: 2016-06-16
Packaged: 2018-05-16 02:02:09
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 24
Words: 57,888
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5809219
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Gabu/pseuds/Gabu
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Nearly ten years ago, Dipper Pines ran away from home, never seen from his family since. In those ten years, he has come to regret his choice, but had become too ashamed to go back. He was all but convinced no one would want to take him back, after all he's done as all the different men he's masqueraded as. Not in the health he's in. But he realized, after a chance meeting with an old friend, that he wants to return to his old life. Before his time runs out.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Ashes

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Flailing Spirits](https://archiveofourown.org/works/4312341) by [Gabu](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Gabu/pseuds/Gabu). 



> This is kind of an offshoot of Flailing Spirits. I got curious as to how Dipper running away would have played out if it had actually transpired. Though, I must say, some spoilery details of FS would need to be glossed over for it to actually work, so to speak.
> 
> Anyway, enjoy.

Your name is Colin Gates and you work at a gas station in a lonely, nameless town in the heart of Nevada. You've been working here for nearly five months now, forever grateful that you were able to find this job after bugging out of some podunk in North Dakota with your mind shattered the way it was. The job doesn't pay much, and you've had to resort to being a mule once or twice early on to afford your share of the rent and food and the more than occasional vice, but you've experienced some semblance of stability for the first time in a long while. You've even started to gather up some sort of meager savings.

You sigh and stretch out your arms, playing with your long hair and thickening beard in the process. You wish you had anything on you to pass the time. Summer's here, evidenced by more out-of-town traffic coming through your humble store, but you're still stuck behind a register most of the time, reading magazines and errantly hoping for an armed robbery to spice things up before going to organize the inventory in desperation. It's not hard work, but it bothers your fussy little heart enough where you always need to take a short break after.

A blue minivan rolls up to a gas pump outside, and you put the magazine you were reading away so you can greet these customers. Strike up conversation. Anything to stave off boredom-induced insanity. You put on a grin as you see two sets of heads pop out from the vehicle, obviously a family, but your grin falters as the parents' faces hit your line of vision. What on Earth are they doing here? And they have _kids_ now?

You regain composure right as they enter, and greet the middle-aged man with the bravest greeting you can muster. "Why hello there. Not from around here, are you?"

The man makes a big, dopey grin. "Huh-huh. Yeah! You sure got that right!"

You've never been as thankful your boss let you keep your long hair as you do right now. "So where'ya from?"

"We live up in Portland, but we're heading all the way down to Phoenix to visit some family."

"Nice. It's good to have family. Relatives, cousins..." You nod your head over to the other three souls in the store. "...wife and kids..." You don't mean to sigh sadly, and this man picks up on your dejectedness.

"Woah. You sounded kinda down just then. Do you have any family?"

You decide to be truthful. "No. I mean sorta, but they live pretty far away from here. Kinda all alone."

The pear-shaped man starts to pull out his wallet. "Dude, why you living out here, then?"

"I... we had a falling out. Left home after that. Been drifting around since." Most of that was the truth.

"Oh, man..." He hands you $40 for gas. "Kinda wish we could let you come with us, but I wouldn't want to pull you away from work, you know?"

You punch in some keys at the ancient register and put the cash in. "Well, that's a very kind offer regardless, S...sir. Like you said, though..." You chuckle.

The man's wife walks up to the register with some hand sanitizer, candy bars, and two grade school aged kids in tow. "Hey, Soos. Is it cool if we get these?"

You were hoping you'd never find out the man's name. That it'd forever be a mystery. But you know it now, and it was the one you least wanted.

Soos laughed kindheartedly. "Sure thing, Melody." He pulled out another $10. "Tyrone and Cassidy getting hungry?"

"Pretty much, yeah."

You almost retch. He named his son that? Regardless, you punch in the prices, activate the gas pump, and give them their change. You take forever with that last part, though. You're not sure what you want to do. This chance meeting has cylinders kicking in your brain that make you wish you could scream out. But you keep your cool as Melody and the kids make their way outside and it just becomes you and Soos again.

"Soos, huh? Odd nickname. I like it, though."

He smiles. "Thanks, dude."

You reach out a hand and his friendly, strong hand saturates your memory in nostalgia. "Name's Colin."

"Colin, huh? Funny thing. We almost named Tyrone that."

You force out a polite laugh. "Oh man, that would've been crazy right about now." You dare to ask. "So what relative is Tyrone named after?"

"Well, uh, not necessarily a relative, per se. He was a cool dude I knew years ago until he vanished. Actually, that wasn't even his name. Everyone called him Dipper." You don't know what to say, but thankfully Soos is able to cover for you. "Yeah, I really miss the guy. Nobody's seen head or tail of him for... almost ten years now?" He sighed, and his voice lowered. "His family called off the search, like, two or three years after he left."

"Oh, wow..." You kick yourself. Not only are you depressed, but now this good man in front of you was. You swallow down a lump and offer a kind word. "You never know, man. He might turn up one day. But, if he doesn't, at least he's in a better place now, you know?"

Soos, oddly, smiled. "Thanks, dude. I've actually been thinking about that a lot. He was a good kid, Colin. Just had a bunch of bad things happen to him and he just, I dunno. I guess he just couldn't take it anymore."

"Wow... Well... I'm sure he's happy now, wherever he is."

"Totally, man." Soos nods. "Well, have a good day, Colin. It was real nice meeting you."

"Yeah..." You pause, and almost let Soos get away. "Hey, uh, wait."

Soos stops literally with the door wide open. "Yeah?"

"You know, if you guys need a place to sleep on the way back up, there's a pretty nice motel just down the road. You won't miss it."

Soos nods. You doubt he took the offer too seriously. "Alright, man. Hope to see you around!"

You wave. "Same."

And with that, he's gone, trundling away back to his car, life and family. As you watch him fill up the minivan and ultimately drive off, you are left with a ghost that haunts you even after your shift ends. Even after you ride your rusted old bike back to the decrepit hole of an apartment you call home with your heart aching. Even as you stare forlornly at your own reflection in the bathroom mirror while making short glances to your fake ID for a person that doesn't really exist.

You're not Colin Gates.

You're Dipper Pines, and you've been missing for almost ten years.


	2. Change

That evening, you sit in the bathtub and plot out just how you got to this terrible state. Of course you know it all started out of witnessing and subsequently blaming yourself for a dear friend's death. You hate admitting how much that messed you up, and you hate the friends you made in the fallout. You tagged along with several of them to some different but equally isolated town in this hellhole called Nevada. For a while things were stable. You got your birthmark almost fully covered up, you brought your addictions at the time under more responsible pretenses, and the people you stayed with were alright with you. Your plans fell apart not long after, though. You lost control, got kicked out, and you quickly scrabbled for your second fake ID and some work in Utah before you could starve to death with less than $2 on your person.

Many events between then and now are permanently blurred out. You know you'd found work, stayed in a decent spot for a while, then a demon would come knocking at the door and you'd jump out the window and flee for 50, 150, 500 miles and start over. When it'd became too hard to find work with the name you had, you'd beg for a new one in return for a favor. You remember being penniless when doing this once, but what those favors were you can only guess at now. Probably for the best.

During a particularly bad stint of unemployment about a year ago, after being "lucky" enough to witness a now faceless friend be shot in the aorta, you'd found underground work as a guinea pig for some "chemists" in North Dakota that'd left you with serious memory problems, to say the least. The most, you guess, would be brain damage and heart problems, if your sometimes erratic behavior and constantly skipping heartbeat gave any indication.

You know you should see a doctor for the latter, but you fear what might happen if you do. By not knowing, you keep telling yourself, you can keep pretending everything's fine. You hate having to wonder just how damaged your brain had gotten with that self-destructive stint for you to think that. You doubt even Grunkle Stan had gotten that low during his drifter days.

And that draws your thoughts to the last day you'd graced your family's presence. Mabel was begging you not to leave. She wanted to help you with... something. You can't remember anymore. One too many seizures from one too many failed batches, no doubt. But you had your friend's hat. That part you do remember. You don't have it anymore, nor can you remember ever having it since. Did you give it back? You remember remembering and feeling upset over doing something stupid and selfish and desecrating towards that physical memory of her, but that's as far as your memory goes.

Memory can be a funny thing, sometimes. Some days, you actually forget your old life. You are left awake those nights trying to piece together and ultimately invent a new childhood before you check your wallet for beat-up photos or some errant connection in your brain is made and it all comes back and you cry because you did all of this to yourself.

Your head throbs, and you massage it with a pruned hand. The water's too cold for you to stay in here, but somehow you stay parked. Maybe you hope to fall asleep and freeze to death or slump underwater and drown. Really, with how badly you've ruined your life, it'd be a release. You want to give up this life. You want this to all be some perverted dream. You close your eyes and let sleep claim you for several hours, though by the time you come to, you're freezing and, regrettably still alive. You can't take it and clamber out of the tub and straight into your old clothes to warm back up.

Feeling lost and desperate and yearning for freedom, you stumble to your bedroom and root around the dresser. As well as cash, those "chemists" gave you free samples of a popular product of theirs. Or rather, you fuzzily recall, you stole as a form of payback for what they'd done. As far as you know, no one has died from it, you take several pills and wait for the colorful chemical explosion to start and have your heart protest it all.

You come to with a familiar sense of disappointment, and check your phone for the day and time. You completely skipped work. Yesterday.

"Dammit."

Your mouth is dry, your body is weak, and even coming down, your room looks much larger and paradoxically more claustrophobic than it should. Reluctantly, you tend to yourself and struggle to regain your bearings, following the string of events back to that chance meeting with Soos. All these things tire your heart out, and its stressed beating makes you feel sick. Just how much longer do you have on this Earth if your ticker is this sick? Quit kidding yourself. You need to lie down and wait out the pain, taking up to an hour after your shift starts before you feel well enough to call in sick. It's probably too late to save your job now, though.

Well, better think of where to go next ahead of time. You pull out your old laptop and wait for it to load. The artificial light hurts your eyes, so you close them. Your words to your old friend blast on through to invade your consciousness. Already, you miss Soos. It wasn't a reunion in the slightest. He didn't recognize you.

_"He might turn up one day."_

You said that to him, about yourself. You grin and think about what would've happened if you told him who you really were. He'd probably think you were mocking him, or that you were crazy. A gaunt, long-haired man with no evidence of that unique birthmark that would have proved that claim. You laugh much harder than you should have, and you look like a madman doing so.

_"He might turn up one day."_

Somehow, those words of yours keep playing in your mind, and they refuse to let go. Admittedly, those words fill your being with wanting. Wishing. You wish you could go back to your old life. This life you carved out for yourself left much to be desired, and hoping and begging for your body to just quit and die already was a terrible hobby to pick up. You hate feeling alone and living like this. You really do miss everyone.

_"He might turn up one day."_

"You know what?" You say this to the walls. "I've had enough of this. I'm going back home."

A tunnel of light opens up in front of you, and for the first time in years you sense real hope in yourself.


	3. Habits

You spend the next day foolishly burning your bridges here: you quit your job, sell off your bicycle to a local kid, and run down to the cheapest barber in town to lop off all that hair from your head and face. Seeing your hair this short almost freaks you out, but you immediately look healthier. Despite the barber leaving it all lopsided, you look so much better now, like you're a functioning, normal member of society.

Of course, when you get back home, you panic. You can't remember how this behavior started, but large changes like these set off a fear response that compel you to run and not look back. It feels very old and solidified, and you wonder if you felt that way when you ran away in the first place. You take a deep breath in an effort to calm your nerves.

"It's okay. You're going to be fine, Col-no. No, your name's not Colin anymore. Never was. It's Dipper, remember? My name's Dipper."

It's a liberating feeling, reclaiming your name. You haven't heard your own name for so long that you have a hard time acclimating yourself, even as you stop in your private work to verbally reaffirm that yes, this is your name. Dipper. It's Dipper. Your name is Dipper. You spend ten minutes just saying this name with a wide grin on your face while your computer warmed up. By the time you're able to use your laptop, you immediately pull up the Internet browser once more, go to a search website, and stop dead in your tracks.

"Oh man... Who am I gonna...?"

The question trails off, but your mind is able to complete it for you automatically. You have to duck into the bathroom to take a good look in the mirror to confirm a niggling suspicion. You can scan your forehead easily now that you've lost the long locks of hair, and can only count several spots scattered about, with none of them being a particular key point in identifying a truly unique birthmark. It had what made people know who you were when you were a kid and teenager. And you were afraid to be taken back to a life you'd foolishly abandoned, taken back to a hell you could no longer tolerate, so you had some guy inject ink almost identical to your skin tone to as many dots as you could afford at the time so you could hide in plain sight, unbounded by a garish, natural marking.

If you could go back to that confused teenager, you'd punch him in the face for making such a stupid choice you now have to figure out how to deal with, now you actually want to be recognized.

You return to your room, and ponder your choices. Mom and Dad are your easiest options. Odds are, they still live in the same house in Piedmont, and it wouldn't be too much trouble to get your way over there. Though the way that you had left, with them knowing you had problems, and especially returning now and having to explain the past ten years to them and confirming their nightmares... They'd love to have you back, but you're not sure how they'd react to how you've been treating yourself. Admittedly, you fear them ultimately rejecting you as you are now.

Oregon is your second choice; Either Soos in Portland or your Grunkle in Gravity Falls would do. But the same hangup chokes you from committing to this choice. Especially when the thought of your Grunkle pass through your mind. The circumstances of your life these past ten years are just vaguely similar enough to Stan's to not want to bother dredging them back up. And you've seen confirmation that Soos has a family now, and to be completely honest with yourself, you can't imagine trying to reenter your life at his place, wherever it was, as the brain-damaged, borderline-junkie bum you are now.

You look at the search engine you've pulled up, and with a single finger type out a name that, unlike your own, have always remembered, from your sickest, constantly vomiting into the toilet bowl days to the peaks of your highest highs. It's no surprise when the results come up with several distinctly different people from all over the continent, so you have to do some digging. It, shockingly, takes several short minutes before you zero in on the right person, and your jaw hits the floor.

"Mabel?!"

You can't believe it's her, but you force yourself to anyway as you read the news article and feel a surge of pride tickle your bones. The online article was about a modest but popular, recent art exhibition of hers. You can tell just by the writing that Mabel has seen a pretty nice amount of success in her own life. You continue your cursory search on Mabel and come up with more precious nuggets of information. Another article, seemingly from before the first, implies engagement to someone unnamed, and you voice an otherwise unheard congrats. A scan of a public profile of hers gives away her alma mater. Not surprisingly, an art school. And yet a third article, an interview, suggests not only a future series of mysterious work, but also confirms the backdrop of your twin's current life. You turn white.

New York City? Can it even be possible? You're not sure if that's even possible. But further research proves that it is the reality. You groan; It'd take days just to get there on bus, and even then you have no idea where to start looking in a city of well over 8 million. The chances of finding her by pure accident should you go would enter well into miracle territory. You know full well though that you want to see your sister most of all. More than anything else in the world. It makes no sense to you why you'd want to risk everything on such a low chance, but you can feel an intense need consume your faculties anyway until it is just you, fear and yearning in this frightening world. 

You don't mean to panic, and sweat and reach into a dresser drawer for the cure-all that sends your mind straight off to another dimension. But you need to run.


	4. Hitchhiker

You've been staring at this old picture of you and your sister that you've always kept on your person for all these years on the loose for nearly fifteen minutes. It's apparent that the drug still hasn't cleared itself out yet from your dumb mesmeration at its condition; It's been wrinkled and torn and folded so many times that the photo paper has the vague consistency of rough fabric now. The two of you, both fourteen, are standing in your front yard with two used up cans of silly string in your hands and on your grin-filled faces. You turn to look at the back; Your sister had written her name there. This is one of two copies of the photo, the two of you had mixed up your versions long ago, but found to had preferred it that way. You know Mabel has the second photo on her - after everything, she has to - with your signature scrawled across the back.

This photo really does remind you of better times.

You snap yourself out of being hypnotized and carefully shove the photo back into one of your wallet's card holders, and then poke into the billfold. You had made one last trip to the bank yesterday to pull out every last cent and close the account: $432.96. However, your memory of the trip is distant and distorted by yesterday's pill pop, and you're sure the banker eyed you suspiciously from your odd actions and odder giggling when you realized at the time that you really were going through with this. Now you're standing off the side of the desert highway, with the sun beating down harsh rays on you, with nothing more than your wallet, its precious contents (including your collection of old IDs and, therefore, old identities), a very heavy, old backpack containing clothing and your laptop, a duffel bag with more clothing and (as you start to question) your pill supply, a cardboard sign, and and one of your roommate's worn-down trucker caps. The Earth here is so desolate of any significant human population that you figure the nearest bus stop is down south, in Las Vegas, but you are also still too drugged to quite realize the two buses that pass right by you as you wait for help.

You feel like a massive fool holding this sign asking for a ride there, and every car that whizzes right past you adds to your self-consciousness. You're currently some half-high, faceless loser begging for a ride to a city of casinos, and with your ragged figure carrying all of your belongings, you have no reliable credibility to flaunt to perfect strangers. After hours that feel like days you have to sit down in the bleached sand and crack open a water bottle you had packed. It feels like you could die out here; Town is two miles back to the north, and you'd left your apartment at the crack of dawn with your ghost being a simple note to your roommate and the landlord. It's almost 2 PM, and every exposed area of skin has turned sunburnt, you feel faint, and your heart is straining to keep you upright in these hellish conditions. Once you've had your fill of water and lie down, your hearing and vision immediately start returning.

Running this far out of town in this heat was a bad idea. Not having so much of a plan other than hitchhike a ride south was a bad idea. Your mind has cleared enough to know that now. You hope that your body can hold out until nightfall, where you also hope you can drag yourself back in your weakened state. You can just make out a car heading down the highway in the other direction between your impaired hearing and your kettle drum of a heart reverberating in your head. That heavy thrum keeps you company in the unforgiving desert heat. You hope that you can at least pass out soon firstly, and secondly wake up alive and with enough energy to limp back to the apartment.

"Hey, dude, are you alright?"

You look over to the general direction of that question, and you pleasantly swear under your breath from the sheer fortuitousness of the situation.

"Hey, Soos!" You call out weakly. "Long time no see!"

"...Colin?" He squints at you. "You got, uh... quite the haircut. Didn't recognize ya there!"

"Yeah." You sit up and you feel a little lightheaded. "Got it all lopped off."

"Dude, what're you doing out here? It's gotta be at least a hundred degrees out!"

You bite your lip, and just go for it. "I need to see my family. I thought about our talk several days ago and decided enough was enough, but the nearest bus station is about a hundred miles that way." You point south. "Don't have a car, so hitchhiking's my only real option."

"Oh, dude...Hang on for just a moment!"

Soos runs over to the minivan and swings around to the passenger side. He appears to be talking to his wife about you and your plight, and you see his mouth go shut multiple times while Melody weighs in on her opinion. You're so certain that you're going to be left behind watching the back and forth that you lie yourself back down and bask in the baking sun. Of course Soos and Melody wouldn't pick up anyone who is, to them, a perfect stranger and have him sit next to their kids.

"Dude? Hey dude!"

You sit back up. "Yeah?"

"Does it matter what bus station you head out on?"

"No, not really. So long as I get to where I need to be."

"Are there any stations up north from here?"

"Yeah, a couple."

"Then hop on!"

"What, really? You're not scared about having some hitchhiker next to your own kids?" A mental leg kicks your skull.

Soos shrugs. "Admittedly a little, but you look like a good guy, and we want to help you see your folks again!"

At that you struggle to your feet with your things and after a jog, they are plopped into now-open back of the blue minivan. You then move in to the back row of seating and see Soos swing around to close the hatch and hop back into his driver's seat. That initial astoundment that a good, old friend had unwittingly picked you up is still going strong, but you're able to overcome the feeling once you feel the van zooming down the road.

"Thank you so much, Soos. Didn't know how much longer I could keep standing there."

Soos is able to see you in the rear-view. "Oh, totally. You look like some kind of monstrous red thing. Should we stop in town and get you some kind of ointment?"

"No." You shake your head. "I don't want you guys to make any more stops than necessary for me."

"Doesn't it hurt, though?" Asks Melody.

"Not yet." It's a lie; Already you're scratching your burning arm. "I'll worry about it when I'm at the stop. From what I read the stops up north are mostly at gas stations."

"Well alright, then. We can get gas when we drop you off. Works out perfectly!"

"Heh. Yeah." Terse silence echoes about. "You're all seriously okay with picking up some strange hitchhiker?"

Melody confesses. "Not entirely, but Soos was so insistent on wanting to help that I decided to go along with it this one time. And I mean, it'd feel wrong to leave you out there."

"I see." You smile and wipe a thick film of sweat off your brow. "Thank you again. Probably won't talk too much. Feel like I got run over by a hair dryer."

Soos chuckles heartily. "No problem, dude."

You settle into your seat and get some much needed rest for the next several hours, and your dozing is able to net you some much needed energy before your sunburn gets too painful to ignore, and you are awake and scratching at splotches on your arms and face while listening to the family talk to one another.

"Hey, mister?"

You stop scratching and are certain that the boy, Tyrone, had just spoke to you. "Me?"

"Yeah. Where is your family?"

"Well, uh," You falter, then tell a little half-truth. "They live all the way in New York."

"Woah, dude." Soos gasps. "Just how long of a bus ride is that?"

"Probably well over two days. It'll be a straight shot there. No beds or anything." You remember this from your experiences throughout your life, from your recent escapades escaping poor choices or circumstances, to those calm, faraway nights snoozing in your seat next to your sister. "Your butt kinda gets sore after the twelfth hour."

"Oh wow. And you're willing to put up with all of that for your family? That's pretty awesome!"

"Indeed it is, Soos."

It takes another half-hour to reach that gas station. Soos comes in with you and he proves to be very valuable in bolstering your confidence while you spend somewhere close to half of your money on that ticket you hope and pray will be the start of something better for you. He then purchases some sunburn ointment that this little shop offers as a parting gift to you, and you almost break your facade over that simple gesture. You want to tell Soos who you really are; It hardly matters to you if he believes your claim or not, but you want desperately for him to know how much he has helped you. Instead, you end up shaking his hand and thanking him.

The time your bus is supposed to arrive is late into the night, so you have no personal qualms in wanting to keep Soos from leaving as long as possible. That means probing for clues. Figuring out a certain memory lapse.

"So, you named your boy Tyrone." You take off your cap to inspect the good work it had done keeping the Sun out of your face in one of the freezers.

"Heh. Sure did."

"How old is he?"

"Tyrone turned seven not too long ago."

You think back to your earlier meeting. "Was that around the time that search was called off for your friend?"

Soos looks down, and of course you feel bad for upsetting him like this again. "It was. Melody and I were having a hard time picking out a name at the time and, well, his sister was really sad when her parents decided to give up. So much so she asked us if we could name our kid that, and we couldn't say no, you know?"

"Wow..." You fake a cough, then put your hat back on. "Don't know what to say. And he had a sister?"

"Yup. They were twins, actually. Inseparable. Dipper and Mabel. Saw those two do pretty amazing things." That wistful look in Soos's eyes turns sad. "But then, we all had lost a friend, and he changed. No one could get him to move on over what happened. Dipper blamed himself for that, considering he tried to save her. You may think I'm crazy saying this, but Mabel wanted him to talk to her ghost and get some peace."

"Ghost?" You feel greatly uneasy, and while you really wish to probe for more information, you're afraid of losing your composure. You absolutely cannot run away from the gas station. "You're right, Soos. That does sound crazy, but, still. Sounds like Mabel really wanted him to feel better."

"Sure did..."

The ensuing, depressing silence drives you insane with guilt, and you need to apologize. "Hey, man. I'm sorry for bringing you down again. I-"

"No Colin. It's fine. Guessing all this reminds you of your own life, huh?"

"I'll be honest, it does. But, like you said, he might show up one day."

"There's some hope left in us." Soos smiles gently.

You give him a grin back, longer than his. "And you've done so much to help me get back to my family, I wouldn't be surprised if he does out of karma."

That comment raises Soos's spirits considerably, if the hearty chuckle gives you a hint. "Oh man, it'd be really sweet if, like, a month from now I get a phone call from Dipper, or I get a call from Mabel or their parents saying he was found and safe at last."

"Hey, here's hoping." You raise an imaginary glass. "You and Mabel and those parents of theirs deserve it."

You soon grab your things from the van before Soos leaves you one more time. You are hit with that familiar sense of loneliness you have never gotten accustomed to. Not even after ten years. You tried getting close to others, but your habit of running when things went bad made it impossible to keep friends in many cases. Eventually, you decided that it was simply less painful to traverse this world, friendless. It really hurts, the loneliness, but it works better for you. At least, you thought that before Soos pulled into your gas station and reminded you of this basic social need. You need to see a familiar face. You need to feel love. To feel happy. To be human.

You need to see Mabel.


	5. Retracing

As a child, you learned quickly that long bus rides were always good opportunities to sit back and think, and this time is no exception, though you admit that it's hard to pay attention with your damaged brain for one, and for two, when your spine and legs become sore from the seat and, for three, either your arm falling asleep supporting your head against the small window ledge or the constant bumping rattles your head against the glass. You use every chance to hop off the bus to give your body a nice stretch and maybe pop into a store for a soda before climbing back on and letting that train of thought lumber back to life. You want to go through the holes in your memory and fill them in the best you can. In east Utah, the seat next to you is vacated and so you feel safe in pulling out your wallet and leafing through all your old IDs in an attempt to jog your memory.

The first, the one you've held onto from the start, shows one Matthew Freeman from Nevada. Your face is so young; You had just turned seventeen when you got this, and while you recall having your birthmark removed by then, your brown locks of hair were beginning to grow and obscure your forehead. The smirk plastered across your thin face belied the deep seated issues you were battling against.

Your second belonged to Dennis Mast from Utah. Some of that youth from before escaped your face, but a forced twinkle in your eyes tried to compensate and hurt the ID's assertion that you were 22. Because you rolled into Salt Lake not too long ago, you're able to remember that you lived not that far from the city. You spent a lot of time downtown, despite not having a lot of money, and enjoyed nights out where now you can't tell if the blurring and blanking out of your memories had to do with your recent memory loss or of those distant nights including chemical cocktail benders.

The third was Benjamin Burlock from Montana. You remember working at some small diner, because it was during a particularly bad shift near the end of your tenure that you first had the thought to return home. But, you recall the fears that, as you'd just turned 19, you'd return as a complete loser to a family that'd sneer at that, as well at the earthy stench your clothes gathered. And that reminds you, too, of the intense nightmares that prevented you from ever sleeping well during that time. You should have known from experience you simply don't mix well with that stuff.

Nelson Van Dyke of South Dakota was no one special. Neither was David Shaw of Nebraska. Or Robert Schrock, also of Nebraska. The only real meaning these three have to you was how these three people coalesced and vanished all in the span of a year. Robert has an agitated look on his face, one that seems itching for good luck to come his way. Perhaps you lied about him. There are vague images of sterile walls and the mentally ill burnt in your mind regarding him.

Then there's John Hatcher from Iowa. He's probably your most successful persona, and you held on for two years as that man from Davenport. But, it came crashing down when you were fired, or you quit, or something regarding your job and girlfriend. His last six months were spent in shelters and making money however he could, mostly through illegal means, then blowing it on cheap but really effective and almost deadly highs. You had almost frozen to death one night too high out of your mind to notice your hands turning blue, but a concerned officer did. You'd fled the hospital and left Hatcher for dead when you came to and realized your illegal activities could have been tipped off to the police by rightfully angry people.

Kirk Marshall of Kansas, Thomas Albert of Colorado, and Nicolas Merriweather of Montana. They were much of the same thing as the earlier trio, though they'd collectively hung on for a year and a half, and, subtly, each looked a little more tired than the last.

Peter Brookes from Idaho. It is in this photo that the last vestiges of your youth disappeared and the face of a slightly irritated man stares down the camera lens. This man, you fear, looks as though he's itching for something, and you need to groan quietly to yourself. You hate being reminded of your past drug problems. At least the memory loss isn't all bad.

Calvin Roderick from Nebraska. Somehow, not much can be said from this picture, except for a strange look that suggests an utter loss of self-respect. The surname 'Roderick' feels like a distant echo.

Liam Galewski from North Dakota. This one hurts you the most. You grew a haggard beard and your hair was down to your shoulders. Your eyes appeared tired and gave the look that they'd went through hell. 

Finally, there's you: Colin Gates of Nevada. Not much changed between you and Liam on the outside aside from a small, overall trim, but your eyes are clearly different. These eyes are lost and confused, as though they have no idea how they got in front of this particular camera. They also yearn for something better, though for what they cannot say.

You organize your old IDs back in chronological order and hide them all in a compartment behind the windowed slot where your current identity sits when you feel like you've had enough walking down the decayed and cracked beyond repair memory lane. There is nothing new these cards can tell you at the moment.

But it is sometime through Nebraska that your defective memory is blessed for what it's worth. Ice pick. That was the working name of the drug responsible for your current health, and with this information you can slowly piece together more fragments of memory from that time. What hits you the most is just how suicidal you were at that point in your life, witnessing another person die in front of you. That person had died protecting you after the two of you were trapped in a violent confrontation with two other guys. For what, you can't recall, no matter how many times you rake and dig at that part.

But what had happened scared you to death, and after fleeing became so full of despair. With what you can gather now, he was a very good guy, and you remember that you felt not just undeserving of having survived, but saddened that your own miserable existence hadn't ended. So you became a lab rat in the small podunk you happened to stop in, too exhausted to keep running for your life, too exhausted to keep living. That was Liam.

"Hey, sir, are you okay?"

You almost jump out of your seat, and turn to the female college student that's sitting next to you. "Uh... y-yeah."

"You sure? You were crying."

"Um... yeah. I... I'm fine." You wipe off the tears that you swear someone had to have put on your face. "Just remembering stuff, you know?"

Warm eyes look into yours. "Do you mind asking me what?"

She seems genuine in her concern; You think over this question, and mumble to yourself. "Uh... sure, why not?" You cough. "I've a lot of past regrets. Memory's kinda gone to shit from some of the things I've done, and I'm only now starting to remember some of it again."

"Oh. That's pretty terrible, man."

"Yeah. You know that whole 'Don't do drugs' thing?" She nods. "Especially true if you're the first human ever taking them. Just go hungry instead."

"Woof... that's even worse!"

"Yeah... Kinda regret the past ten, eleven years of my life."

"How old are you?"

It seriously takes a sombering moment to recall your own age. "26, I think? Was born in late August, '99." It hurts that you can't pin down your own birthday anymore. Ice pick sure was an appropriate name to call that highly destructive drug.

She nods. "Yeah. You're 26. But that'd mean you've regretted everything since you were 15?" You nod back. "Dude. That's just terrible."

"Yeah... yeah, it is." You'd be impossibly depressed by this whole conversation at this juncture were it not for the fact that this college student's mannerisms remind you so much of Wendy that it acts like a wooly, insulated blanket. This young woman makes you happy, in a way.

"I'm Melissa, by the way."

You smile and hold out a hand to shake. "Name's Dipper."

You are disappointed when your busmate has to get off in Omaha, but the hours you had spent talking to her after your introduction into a person you haven't been in years were the most pleasant you had in a long time. Were it not temporally impossible you would have been absolutely convinced Wendy had been reincarnated into this very person as the heavy stuff burns down into happier, lighter, but just as purposeful conversations you're sure to never wholly remember. She hugs you goodbye at your transfer, wishes you luck on your journey, and you have to hold back tears as this stranger wanders out of your life forever.

She was that much like Wendy, that her departure was like watching her die again.

But it wasn't, you hadn't, and you hop on your next bus to continue the next leg of your trip, alone on a friendless voyage.


	6. New York City

"Okay, folks. Welcome to New York City. We'll be stopping at the Port Authority Bus Terminal shortly. This will be the final stop for this bus, ergo everyone must claim their bags whether or not they plan to continue on another bus. If you are planning to continue..."

You've heard similar speeches back in Salt Lake, Denver, Chicago... maybe one or two more? But the key difference between then and now is the simple fact that this is your stop. You stretch your body as much as you can in the cramped vehicle; You rotate your swollen ankles and feet about and stretch your sore butt in preparation. There is much less energy in your soul now that you've done nothing but sit on your ass and ride on multiple busses for over two-and-a-half days for a grand total of over 2500 miles, but it quickly picks itself up as you down the last of an energy drink, right as the bus makes its turn off the highway from the tunnel. By the time it trundles to its final stop, you're jittery with caffiene and anticipation. You are impatient waiting in that designated area for your duffel bag, so the very second you notice that blue, cylindrical, overstuffed puff, you snatch it up and make an initial beeline towards the station's exit before getting distracted over an overpriced city map and equally overpriced station food to stuff your gullet with. You hope you can keep the mental note to be more careful with your money from here on out.

The first thing you realize stepping into the street is just how insanely over your head you're in. New York City is massive, beyond your scope on what a big city truly is. The largest city you've ever set foot in was San Francisco during a school field trip, and your jumping around from town to tiny town the past decade has done you a grave disservice preparing you for this moment.

The second thing you realize is that you're breathing in-tempo to a mini panic attack due to this unexpected agoraphobia. There are way too many people here. And many of them appear to be tourists. You mentally kick yourself; If you made this decision earlier, back in a time where you still had your smarts, that factor would have been the very first thing you would have considered and planned out. There is a moment where you mourn the loss of that part of yourself, in-between rising cliffs of anxiety and dread, then you are driven to pick east to start off on your mission proper.

An impaired attention span mixes with new sights and sounds and creates a massive roadblock in your being. You need to stop every ten or twenty steps to take in something, be it archetecture, traffic, the throngs of people, noise, or even the heat radiating from the sky and the pavement. Distress over something like this feels too foreign, and it creates a need to keep pushing yourself forward to some shelter. You pass by some park followed by what looks like a public building, and it draws you in. It is a bonus once you're close enough to notice the writing on a sign: New York Public Library.

And at that, you're gone, already deep in library's belly.

You've practically forgotten how much you love libraries; Whatever libraries you came across in the past decade were housed in small buildings at best, and dilapidated hovels at worst. Some were even in vans. Often, many of its informational books were out-of-date, and more still were beaten up by years of abuse. It had left a sour note in your gullet, and you strayed away from their shelves of paltry knowledge. Again, you feel irrecoverably overwhelmed, but you relish in this energy diving into the aisles, running your fingers across the endless sea of books while you travel up and down the rows. You feel years be taken off your shoulders just being in this temple, but then again, your body reminds you it is carrying too much, and of the three days situated in unnatural positions, and you need to sit down in an overstuffed reading chair to recoup.

You must have dozed off at some point, as you are quickly roused by a thick hand shaking you awake at the shoulder. Your eyes snap open and you rapidly turn to the vaguely disgruntled man; From his badge you assume he works at this library. You start to offer some thanks, but he cuts in.

"Mister, we're closing in five minutes."

You're shocked and take a look at a clock on the wall. "What? Already?"

"Yeah. Better pack your things and head on off to one of the shelters."

"Shelters?" It occurs to you what he means. "But, I'm not homeless."

"Uh-huh. Right." He says with bemusement. "Still, you gotta get going. You can't sleep here."

His orneriness sours your mood. "Ugh. Alright, alright, I'm going. Jeez..."

You gather your things and boot yourself back onto the street. You can't help but think the librarian was right; Technically, you don't have a home here, at least not yet. Your nearest abode has probably written you off as a deadbeat and evicted you by now. As of now, you, whether you're Colin Gates or Dipper Pines, are homeless. 

You hate to think about how used to this situation you are.

You hate to think about how much you can't remember when it comes to urban survival skills.

However, you have cash on you, so at least, for the next few days anyway, you can get by on some cheap motels outside of town or, better yet, a hostel. A wisp of memory claims hostels as being a very safe and economic solution for housing, at least temporarily, and cash is tight, but existent.

The reconaissance mission you make in the next three or four hours to find the cheapest hostel exhausts your body and your spirits. Of all the places you've ventured into, the absolute cheapest you could find for downtown New York rests at a shocking 30 bucks. You count your money; Not including change, you just barely have $210. Sure, it means you can afford five or six nights, but you don't kid yourself; It's going to take longer than that to track Mabel down. You know it. You're sure of it. Your loused up brain is aware of it. However, you're beyond dead at this tenth hostel, your heart is straining, and as much as you hate to spend the $40, you are more than eager to give it up for a hot shower and a warm dormitory bed to pass out on for the night.

You are roused nice and early thanks to your roommates all being loud and inconsiderate. Scathing early morning grumpiness is seen as it is and ignored with laughing, particularly at your expense. Somehow you don't recall these people turning in last night. You must have been dead asleep. Regardless, you make yourself get out of bed and get yourself nice and ready for your day ahead. You eat a very large breakfast, perhaps more than your fill, and get dressed in fresh clothing. When you check out with your things in tow, you have a niggling worry about not remembering where that cheap hostel was located, but you shrug it off for later as you step outside and, thanks to a local, you find the library.

It had just opened, so you are able to find the perfect little corner to set up. Your bags are used as a placeholder while you ask for a pen and paper from a young, helpful librarian, then return, plug in your laptop, and wait eagerly until the browser is ready to go.

"Alright. If I were Mabel, where would I be, cyberspace-wise?" You ask this to yourself with tented fingers. "If I find her online, I can easily try and send her a message. Though," You frown. "Then again, I had ten years to do that, and never did..."

You are stuck in some episode of self-loathing for quite some time. It is hard to realize that you've been mentally derailed until you check the time on your laptop and it reads 10:31, at which point you snap yourself out of it and drag yourself to action. You type your sister's name into the provided search engine and open up the pages you vaguely recall opening up back home as a jumping point. That underused sleuthing muscle shambles back to life, and with the piece of scratch paper and pen at your disposal, you start slowly jotting down basic facts about her: Her current city, the schools she attended, her birthday (which clears the question on when your birthday was), and the various places in the city where her art was shown, among other smaller nuggets of data.

But the meatiest ones by far, the ones you were skimming for in the first place, are a series of links. One is for a Twitter account, and two are for blogs, one professional, and the other personal. You figure you need to break for lunch soon, so you look at her professional blog first. You're left wondering if this is really Mabel's blog, considering how coralled the writing is, but the photos littered about assure you that this is indeed your sister's, which is plain baffling. However, the relatively droll blog gives you another important fact in the about page.

According to the page, she is currently residing in Brooklyn.

You pump an excited fist in the air and just barely manage to hold back a holler in time. This narrows your search considerably! You need to check the boundaries of Brooklyn, as well as find a current estimate of the population.

That number does not make you feel well. In short, you'd have better luck scouring all of San Francisco and Oakland and San Jose combined. But you have a small geographical area, which is better for your health in the grand scheme of things, and so you collect more data and jot down these web addresses for around two hours from now while you go grab a fast food burger and a mental breather.

Returning to the library, you situate yourself in another section and crack open your laptop for another round of research. You're able to read through Mabel's entire professional blog and feel pride that you could hold your attention that long on something that ended up to be of no real use to you other than revealing her general location and showing you some photos of artwork and of Mabel herself. She has grown up considerably, and now looks like a young, accomplished woman. She still emits a warm radiance from deep within that brings back a flood of memories only subconsciously recalled but there and easing on your soul nonetheless.

That joyful look on her face is subdued however, almost controlled, and then you remember that this is her professional blog you're looking at here. Upon typing in the address to her personal blog, you are assaulted with every color of the rainbow and a fantastic smile from her while her arms are wrapped around another man, short, blonde with matching stubble and with thick-rimmed glasses. He is smiling too, but his is much more calm and relaxed. The title to this post, situated above this picture, is just as in-your-face with its all-caps and excessive punctuation: TWO MORE MONTHS!!!!!!

It doesn't take you much strain to conclude that this is the fiance you had heard about, and this post, made just a week ago, has to allude to their wedding day. Scrolling down to read, your suspicions are happily confirmed. Last weekend of August, too. Figures Mabel would want it coincide with her birthday. Your birthday.

It makes you feel warm and almost fuzzy; You can't begin to imagine how Mabel will react when realizing that her own, long-missing brother will actually be there to see her get married. She'll be miles beyond overjoyed, for sure. It'd be a dream come true, and despite growing cold on leads as you read the beginnings (or rather, ends) of this near-daily diary of hers backwards through time, your hopes are raised further and further upward on this one thought alone. Mabel would be absolutely thrilled to have you back. To have Dipper back.

You know it in your bones to be true. You're going to be welcomed back with an intense ferocity by her that it's going to overwhelm you. You're sure of it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Not sure how I feel about this one. Feels like a slow expository chapter where things just happen. But tell me what you think. Maybe I'm just having a bad case of the bluhs this week.


	7. Fact-Finding

_You are walking down a stretch of highway in the middle of the night, stumbling, exhausted and perhaps too drunk, but you are hypnotized by the faint glow of civilization that beckons you forth down this lonely road in northeastern Utah. You've largely hitchhiked your way out of Kansas, but the most recent good samaritan booted you out of his semi the moment you had to insist drinking vodka straight from the bottle you'd been carrying all this time in your backpack._

_What can you say? Your drinking levels spike to worrying heights whenever rough upheavals come your way. It helps relieve the anxiety. But this trucker wanted none of it, and so the past ten or so miles you've been trudging along with your meager belongings weighing so heavily on you that drinking actually comes in handy for lightening your load, or at the very least making you numb to the aches and pains that come with carrying a backpack full of metaphorical bricks._

_You were kicked out not too long after dusk, and you're glad that the nighttime summer air isn't scathingly cold. It's nippy, but tonight, at least, it's manageable so long as you keep walking._

_The highway seems to stretch on forever and ever and ever. You've stumbled more than once just trying to navigate your way ahead. The light of the nearest town doesn't seem to get any closer no matter how far you walk. You're so drunk that perhaps your vision is severely tunneling and threatening to leave you entirely, but it's so dark you can't prove this._

_The lights that pounce from behind you take you by total surprise, and you turn around to be completely blinded by a lone road warrior with his high beams on. You're quickly disorientated and, with the help of that vodka, knocks out all coordination and you fall over on your back. This late night driver doesn't care to stop, and zooms right past you while your sight, so used to the dark, is entirely wrecked for a solid ten minutes._

_You decide, between your tiredness and the aching soreness in your bones, to stay here. All those trillions of stars in the cosmos that are slowly revealed to you are just too beautiful to ever want to possibly ignore._

\---

You wake up before dawn the next morning in that cheap hostel you were looking for. That odd dream you had felt more like a forgotten memory. It plays in your mind on a rickety reel-to-reel, but you are able to analyze the contents and realize it for what it is. How it stuck in your mind in spite of blackout levels of alcohol is boggling, and should have been impossible. Like a bone from an archaeological dig, though, this scrap of the past has been recovered.

You can only hope it doesn't crumble in your hands, or worse, crumble when your back is turned.

Today is to be a second day of research, you've decided. You've greatly underestimated the scope of your sister's personal blog; It'd be much easier to simply skim through it all and try and pick out what you need, and you know what you need.

However, it feels much more complicated than that, particularly after you sit down at a table and get your trilobite of a laptop running. You want to skip ahead, but you're afraid of missing something. It's better to be safe than sorry.

It becomes clear somewhat quickly that this 'something' you're afraid to miss is your sister's own life. Truth be told, you want to read through all these posts to gain a semblance of who your sister is now and how she came to be this way. How did Mabel evolve to this wonderful person without you? It doesn't make a whole lot of sense to you. You were pretty certain after the runaway honeymoon she had fallen apart, yet she somehow managed to not only survive, but thrive.

That thought worries you. Maybe she doesn't need you in her life after all.

And then you hit a blog post from last year sucker punches you.

The date posted was on July 15th.

The title is simply 'Nine Years'.

The accompanying picture is of you and her, crowded around your 16th birthday cake. Somehow, you recall the massive struggle you had just trying to smile for this camera. Wendy's sudden, terrifying, and tragic death was still very fresh in your head, causing misery and self-blame at all hours of the day. It was doing quite a number on your sleep.

You wish, desperately wish, that you could go back to this teenager and implore him to seek help unless he wanted to become you. If he saw he'd be scared from even thinking about starting down the path of problematic dependencies.

You scroll down and begin to read the blog post.

_It's been nine years to the day since you punched me in the face and left._

Oh, goddammit, this blog post is directed at _you_.

_I still miss you, Dipper. I realized a long time ago that I was being too pushy at a time where I should have listened to you more. I really wanted to help you start moving on from our friend's passing. You had changed since that day. It was frightening me to see you go further and further downhill, so in a way, could you really blame me for wanting to stop that?_

You shake you head at this. You can't blame her in the slightest.

_When I saw you choose what you thought were your friends over me, I panicked. I immediately told Grunkle Stan what had happened. We expected you to come back to a music festival in the town we were staying in for the summer, but I guess you never did? We gave out a ton of missing person posters there, but we never heard back from the police that day._

She is speaking so unusually in this post. All the rest you've had to put some minute work in deciphering and untangling from excited run-ons, leaps in logic, and other things from a thought process you had once down pat. Here, though, the sentences are almost perfect. You have a clear understanding. Conversely, she is writing a somber note to you, and Mabel is being absolutely serious.

_More police were called in the next few weeks. I knew the plate was from California, but not the numbers. I was able to describe the van, but it was never found, even when police in other states got involved. It was like the thing vanished off the face of the earth and took you with it._

_Mom and Dad really wanted you back home. We all wanted that. The remaining friends that were found told us you'd gone to Nevada. Guess you hid yourself that well. No one could find you even there._

_Our parents' hopes really sank through the months, but they kept trying until exactly seven years ago. At that point, they told me that it was certain something happened, because we found your other friends you had ran off with, but they had told us you ran off and they lost all contact with you. We held an unofficial memorial service then, and an official one several years after that. Didn't want to believe then you had passed, and I still don't want to. It really hurts to think that. You dying cold and alone in a field somewhere._

That hits you hard. Way too hard. Replace the field with an alley and remove the guardian angel that protected you that night and Mabel would have had it down to a T.

_Dustin, my finacee, has been encouraging me to take on searching for you. Don't know where to start, but I'd do anything to find you, or at the absolute least know where you ended up. Mom and Dad think I'm crazy, but I know you're alive somewhere. You're probably reading this right now! Wouldn't that be neat? :D_

You crack an amused grin when classic Mabel shines through in that small moment. It's the only time you can smile, and it's such a brief moment you later wonder if you had even smiled at all.

_But, if you're not, and never will, Dipper, please know that from the very deepest chasms of my heart that I love you. I'll always love you. Did you feel unloved when you left? Because I'm so sorry if I made you think that way. I loved you then, I love you now, and I'll always love you, through thick and thin._

_So, wherever you are, I hope you're either taking care of yourself or that you're resting easy somewhere beyond here._

_I hope to see you again someday,_

_Mabel_

You can't see your sister's name. Your eyes are blinded by thick tears, the only thing you'll allow to let out until you can grope your way to the nearest men's restroom so your heart can sag and turn a depressed gray.

You had hurt her so much. You felt that pain deeply embedded in those typed words, and the one thing you are able to question in this misery is how many times Mabel had to wander away from the keyboard to do just as you're doing now.

You blubber in a bathroom stall for about twenty minutes as you can only think about the scope of how you hurt the people who loved you. 

You're sorry, you're sorry, you're sorry, you're so, so sorry.

The pain Mom and Dad must have felt in giving up and thinking your life had ended pitifully and so far away from them.

You're sorry, you're so sorry.

Stan must've felt like a good-for-nothing failure of a guardian for letting it happen; He probably thought things would sort themselves out, or that it wasn't his business encroaching on your business.

You're so sorry.

And you know of just how much Mabel suffered seeing your spirit slowly die long before your physical form left her world, and now you know of the aftermath.

You're...

Your fist punches the side of the stall to try and beat this agony out until the side of your hand starts to sting really badly. The sensation is almost mildly drug-like, and you are able to stop sobbing simply by distraction. Your hand really hurts, and you check it out to see that it had skinned and bled fairly badly.

"Dammit." You mutter. "I'm gonna need a bandage."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Fun fact: I was considering Chicago to be the location of this story, since it's my hometown and would know a lot of things about it, but one of those things happens to be just how many freaking neighborhoods the place has just on an official basis. Unofficially, there's more. Dipper's quest would've been over in .4 seconds. So, New York it is. :T


	8. Lifestyle Changes

You're uncertain about your sleeping arrangements for tonight, as much as you were uncertain last night, but tonight's the night you've decided not to check into that cheap hostel. This should hopefully conserve your precious cash, but as a result you'll have to find a spot to camp out. It's not like you haven't done this before; Despite your poor memory you remember your months of homelessness in Iowa, of the stretches of sleeping outside on hard pavement or in mud or snow, and ultimately almost dying because of it.

Admittedly, though, you don't feel comfortable now searching for any kind of shelter, a holdover to those old days. You can be thankful that at least your present situation has your name clean and the weather warm and kind. You are leery, though, because there are many more people living here in New York. Millions. And thousands more staying as tourists. Things can go wrong, and a heavy feeling in your gut assures you that things will, that it will be how your story ends.

You think Central Park could be your outdoor shelter, given its size. You did a cursory search on the place before you left the library for the day, and you were pleasantly surprised to find out there are some decent, thick shrubs and wooded spots you could hide out in. After a dinner of nothing more than a sandwich and a soda and asking the waiter for directions, you take your things and travel on foot to the huge, green oasis in the middle of the city.

You've purposely arrived just before dusk so you can scout the place a little. You're actually a little paranoid over finding a good spot to hide, and it's with this that you become disappointed in the places you explore as you fidget with your bandaged hand. None of these nooks and crannies are perfect, in your eyes. You want shade and shelter, but you also want something that will make it impossible for any passerby to spot you in. Truth be told, though, many of these miniature grottoes can fit the bill, but you can't, for the life of you, figure out why any of these don't speak to you.

It's an hour of wandering the park before you discover what your guts tell you is the best hiding place-- in fact, you almost miss it entirely. Thick shrubs divide you from a small, flat patch of grass shrouded by greenery and thick, low-hanging branches of a willow tree.

"This could work." You utter to yourself.

Carefully, you tread through the bushes and branches into the small clearing. Turns out, it's just the perfect size for you and your bags. You smile at your amazing discovery, and you set up a very rudimentary camp here. You spread out the old clothes you had worn the last few days on the ground and position your duffel bag on one end of this long but shallow pile. Of the clothes you had gathered together, you pull out an oversized hoodie that will work fine as a blanket, and with your rock of a backpack acting as a teddy bear and a little shield against the elements, you get cozy the best you can manage. It never was an easy task to sleep outside, but the warm weather and soft ground makes it easier on you, and soon you drift off to an early slumber, the bill of your cap tucked over your eyes.

\---

_You're young, and you're terrified that already you're going to be facing the end of your life real soon. You don't really understand what just happened, or maybe you do, but you don't want to think that the circumstances were something that directly happened to you._

_At this time about a week ago, you were living in some ramshackle with your friends and some of theirs, enjoying freedom for what it was worth. Everyone around you had a terrible job, but at least, together, the household was able to have something left over each week to blow on substances; You insisted on doing odd jobs both online and in real life. Avoiding detection by the authorities was a top priority for you, as the last thing you wanted was to go back home to California. Back to a life that was nothing more than detritus and struggling to stand on legs too weak to support the body they'd meant to serve._

_However, despite your small gains in the jobs you find, you're far from able to pay your fair share for rent, and that fact made your roommates ireful. The self-hatred returned, and what was only the occasional drink or robotrip flared into something greater than what you had left your life on._

_It was you stealing fifty dollars for your vices that turned out to be the last straw. You were beaten and thrown out on your ass, followed by a bag of your tiny accumulation of worldly possessions, and just like that you were on your own. Thanks to some trucker several days ago you find yourself in Utah. You only have several dollars left, and you're terrified. You'll undoubtedly starve unless either something good comes your way or you lower your standards and start shoplifting food._

_Yes, your life is going to end soon._  
\---

You wake up on account of a slight shift rousing a wholly numbed arm, and that shift coming from a now forgotten but vaguely aching dream. The pins and needles are beyond unpleasant to endure, yet you try your best to bear with it until it passes. You're curious about the time, so you pull out your old laptop and very carefully open the lid wide enough to both hit the power button and to hopefully read the time without attracting unwanted attention from the monitor light. The clock says it's 4:52. You quickly turn off the computer and shove it back in your bag, and stand guard.

Good. No one noticed you, it looks like. The last thing you want is to spend time in jail. They will find out about your multiple identities and the crimes most of them committed. You'd go to prison for sure, and that would be the end of your search for Mabel, and perhaps the end of your life as well. Being reminded of your life ending because you have no options left makes your heart sink and be uneasy, and it murmurs an opinion of its own. It is soon ignored as you are bone tired, and it takes mere minutes before you go back to sleep.

Today, you think, you'll try a different tack to your search. While you don't like sticking your neck out like this, you came to this conclusion playing with your ancient cell phone and filling up on a couple of bagels at a coffee shop. There's no way you'll be able to find Mabel behind a computer screen; You have to take your search out onto the field. So you use the establishment's restroom to change your clothes and take care of yourself, then step out into the world and take a subway train to Brooklyn, the precious picture of yours in hand as you cross the imaginary divide to this section of the city.

Time to find some locals.

"Excuse me, sir?" He doesn't look.

"Can I have a moment of your time, ma'am?" She wasn't paying attention.

"Is it okay if I ask you a couple of quest..." They throw you the bird. "Okay fuck you, then..." You mumble.

"Do you live around here?" The woman hurries nervously past.

"Hey, man, can you help me?"

The heavy-set man turns around and looks at you. "Eh, sure. I don't gotta go anywhere fast. Whuddya need?"

You forgot the lines you practiced on the train ride over for this moment, so you stammer and bumble over yourself.

"Uh... w-well have you seen this p-person?" You show him the photograph. "No, wait, I mean have you seen my sister? Mabel? The artist? I think she might live here?"

He blinks, looks at the beat-up photo, then back to you. "Nope. Sorry. I don't think I've ever heard of her."

"Mabel Pines?"

He shakes his head. "Don't think so... no. Sorry."

You go through this song and dance dozens and dozens of times the entire morning: Show someone the picture, ask them if they knew Mabel, then be told they either hadn't heard of her, or if they had, never saw her in person. You start to feel really stupid; Why the hell are you using such an old photograph? Needless to say, the whole experience has a very demoralizing effect on you, and so you hole yourself in a corner of a coffee shop, not really caring that coffee doesn't play well with your heart as it used to. It also gives you the shakes, and you're forced to buy a sandwich to keep the trembling hunger at bay.

Confidence shot, instead of going back to your research on Mabel, you mindlessly browse the Internet the way you have always done in recent memory; Because you have no use for social media, you've taken to mindless online games and news sites. It's mere nervous fiddling about with your computer, where nothing productive can come out of it. You read articles on politics, fluff pieces, scientific studies, drug studies, and moan when you can barely hang onto the gist of these mini-essays. Not again, you lament. Apparently this had to be one of your bad mental days.

Eventually, you are kicked out of the establishment for loitering about for way too long that you had reached closing time with these people. Walking through the streets, you realize how much of an unfortunate bust the day was, though you try asking about some more just in case you had to find your luck a little bit harder.

No dice. You definitely have to be in the wrong neighborhood.

This park is much smaller than Central Park, but your lassitude speaks loud, so for tonight it'll have to be your campground. You rest your butt onto a park bench, your endurance almost spent from the long day and backpacking it through countless city blocks. Stretching tired limbs and your parched maw, you melt into the uncomfortable slats that make up this bench and close your eyes for a quick, ten minute nap. The walk tuckered you out something fierce, and you could use a little bit of shut-eye right now before setting out for an alcove to sleep in proper.

You never intended to doze off.

"Hey, bud."

Something blunt roughly butts you in your side, which brings your hands to that area as a reflexive defense as you open your eyes to see what the threat is. A cop of about average size and severe compassion fatigue, as well as general exhaustion, stares into your eyes. It takes all of your self-control not to jump and even more not to run, and you're quite proud of yourself when you're able to hold back on both of those impulses. Admittedly, though, you're way more pensive than proud.

"You can't sleep here." He adjusts his name-badge for you to see: Henderson

"Oh! Uh, yes, yes." Bags are gathered hastily, you tip your cap. "Right. I'll be on my way. Uh... do you know anywhere I can crash for the night?"

"No sir. Just keep moving."

He said that as you stand up, and you are confused. Shouldn't officers be helpful as a standard rule? Does he really not know? He can't be that new to the force if he's emitting this strong of an air of confidence.

"Wait, you mean you don't know or you don't want to tell me?"

"Well," He lazily muses. "I could find out, but that'll require me to go back to my car and getting online and, really, I'm covering this area while my friend's on vacation. I've no idea where a shelter is. Would think you'd know."

"Hey, man, I only just got here myself!" The louder half of you bristle at the insult lobbed at you, but you rein yourself in after that statement and soften your vexated gaze. "Uh, um... by that I mean you gotta understand. I've as much of an idea as to where a shelter is, sir, but you know people who know. So," Your grin is forced and skittish. "Will you help me?"

"Hmmm... nah. Just get out of here, unless you want to come with me."

You take several steps backwards and shake your head with a nervous energy that you swear can and will make this man rightly suspect that you are hiding something illicit. "N-no. That won't be needed, sir. I'll just go and find a place myself. Thank you, sir."

Henderson gives you one hell of a stink-eyed glare while you make your slow, backwards retreat, and you believe that it's time to say your prayers. However, he sighs, rolls his eyes and punctuates it all with a shake of his head.

"Just stay out of trouble, alright?"

He then turns around and walks down the pathway. You watch as he gets smaller on your horizon, until he takes a turn and becomes shrouded by interfering shrubbery. You constantly look to your left, right, behind, and above as you allow yourself to be scared from that encounter, and you thank your lucky stars that this officer, surly as he was, decided to leave you alone. Again, you don't want to think about what may happen if you were taken in.

Still, this leaves you in a fairly precarious conundrum; Either you cave in and check into another hostel, you find a shelter, continue walking until dawn or find an all-night cafe, or risk another encounter by sleeping outside. If only you could remember where you found your perfect little hiding spot from last night, let alone remembered the spot in the first place rather than veer into the nearest park your sights locked onto, you'd be set. You had really tried to remember your surroundings, but your memory isn't nearly what it used to be. Sad to think that once, long ago, you had a pretty sharp, pseudoeidetic memory, and now you can barely remember what you ate in the last day. Did you eat a bagel? Or was it a muffin?

What you are able to do normally, though, is walk. The night is cool, and your possessions, while just as heavy as earlier, don't suck the energy out of your bones as much as they have. That cat nap did you wonders. You're able to wander a good couple of miles before needing to rest at a bus stop, and you can be proud of another thing you've accomplished tonight, no matter how stupidly pedestrian a task such as walking a distance is. At least your body's been having a good day, especially in regards to physical exertion; You barely recall any time today that your heart stumbled, though, again, your memory is appalling. It could've stopped completely for all you know.

Much like how your body once again stopped here, on another bench, to unintentionally doze off again until rudely roused by another grumpy but clementine officer. Yeah, you definitely are going to need to find a hostel to crash in. There's another forty dollars you'll never see again.

You shudder in your bed at 3 AM and promise yourself to get back on track before your past can meander its way into your current and cause heaps of trouble. Mabel needs to be your top priority. You can't get yourself distracted by anything else. Today had sucked, but really, not all days can be amazing. You'll do better tomorrow.

For the sake of your life you have to.


	9. Terrified

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You know that feeling where you're getting burned out with writing, feeling like it's crap and all, and yet you have a huge majority of the story written except the part you're going through right now? Because that's what's happening and it's driving me nuts.
> 
> Though maybe I should also not have ten thousand writing projects all at once. That would also be good.
> 
> :T

Days four, five and six are all spent back at the public library pouring through Mabel's marks across the Internet. Your big three websites greatly help in giving you valuable information about both you and her, although you usually need to dissect the facts from the normal discourse Mabel leaves in order to reach the precious payloads. Several dark patches of memory become filled with enlightenment from these blog posts and tweets. You're remembering more of your shared past with your sister, and every discovery, no matter how minor, awakens long-dormant neurons in your brain and they in turn, form connections with one another, detouring places where your brain will forever be dead, and strengthening the color and vibrancy of what you already knew yet couldn't shake that dream-like veil off of from before.

When you're not slumped over your working space, dead asleep, you are filling reams of scratch paper with notes and diagrams. You want to retain all of this information, and while your memory is proving to be mending itself, you're not wholly trusting of its capabilities, and some of these revealing posts still carry with them an air of unreality. Your inability to determine whether some of what Mabel had recollected actually happened or not is like a mental disability of your own making. You hate framing your problems in that light, but it's true, you suppose. The weeks after leaving behind your Liam persona were ones where, at its most embarrassing, you couldn't tie your shoes. Your mind was so badly mangled that a simple process was a confusing tangle caused by misfiring and dead neurons, and even now you loathe that you needed to relearn a process most six-year-olds had down pat.

You hate your lack of money management, and you hate how expensive anything and everything in this city is turning out to be. Still unwilling to find a shelter to sleep in, yet still afraid of taking the risk of sleeping outside after the near-misses, you've slept in hostels since, and watched your wallet get lighter and lighter. As of now, on day six, you have around thirty dollars remaining. How much did you have starting out, you wonder? Two-hundred, about? You grimace; At this rate, you're going to be flat broke by tomorrow, and then what? Honestly, you don't want to think too much on what you're going to do, and that is what you foolishly decide on for the time being.

Eventually, you hover your cursor over a particular link on a contact page on Mabel's blog that you promised yourself ever since day four to click on, keeping that tab open for when you not only gathered the courage, but within the same breath remembered how imperative it is to go through with it. Incidentally, you had absolutely forgotten the chore until you had clicked on the tab in curiosity, wondering why among the twenty other tabs you had this one in particular pinned down.

"Oh right," Your eyes lighten and you think only you can hear your whispering to yourself. "Okay. You can't forget to do this Col-Dipper! Ugh, dammit..." You shake your head. "Dipper. You have to do this now. You have very little money left, you gotta do this. You're done with hobo life. Never. Again. So the sooner you contact Mabel, the sooner you can meet her. The sooner you meet her... hopefully, the sooner she might let you... stay, maybe."

You hover for a very long time over the email link, craning a tense index finger over the left mouse button, wanting more than anything to press down hard enough to trigger your email client. Adrenaline pumps, and you remain frozen in this position for ten minutes, and it doesn't take rocket science for you to understand why this is happening.

You're afraid.

Of what, it's a myriad of reasons. A gut feeling implores that you will be consumed by grave misfortune if you go ahead, but you know that all the reasons you are giving to be afraid all boil down to not wanting to fail. However, you point out to yourself in a moment of self-defeat, hasn't failure been your primary state the past eleven years? You shake away the negativity before it can call your husk its home, and add that the failure of one part of your journey doesn't necessarily guarantee the failure of the whole.

Still, you need to build the courage to click. Despite your little pep talk, that fear of failure looms in your mind. What if Mabel doesn't see the message? What if she does, but is so angered by you leaving that she refuses to respond? No, you think, that can't be possible. She said it herself that she would love to reunite with you once more. But, your anxiety spits back, she had been living in the shadow of your absence for ten years. She had to go to your memorial service, had to be told the grim news that you had remained silent for so long that it was certain, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that you had died. For you to suddenly show up, alive and mostly well, would go against everything she was told. But, ultimately, you know Mabel; She laid bare everything she felt, and rarely kept anything a secret. That post she created was her trying to reach out to you, hoping against the naysayers and the obvious facts that you would reach back.

In the end, you can't deny her of yourself, and you can't deny yourself the slim chance to see her face by the day's end. So you click the link and, in an instant, realize that you don't have an email address specifically for _you_. Colin Gates has one, but you don't want to use it. He is not you. Mabel would never believe in Colin, and neither would you. You've had enough of fake identities. It takes about five minutes to create a new address, with your actual name, the one you'd always went by, but with a number haphazardly slapped on at the end, considering that you had apparently taken that same address name in the past. Now, all of your fingers are pensively hovering about various keys on your keyboard until each digit summons the bravado to dance in coordination with one other to spell out a message:

_Hello, Mabel. It's me, Dipper. The past decade has been absolute hell, but I'm writing to let you know that I'm still alive. I read that you've moved to Brooklyn, so I've followed you here. You must miss me very much. I'm sorry I caused so much pain, but I love you, and I would love more than anything to schedule a time and place where we can meet up. I need you to help me get my life back together. Like I said, it's been rough, and I want to be a part of your life again. I love you, Dipper._

You feel dumb having the subject of the email be nothing more than 'It's me', but it's too late to make any real change, as you've already sent it out. You're on edge, but in a good way, you think. You readjust the brim of your cap and heedlessly brush a thin divot on your tongue through your teeth. You think now's a good time to break for lunch. Thirty bucks are all that's left to your name, but there's a growing, good feeling that this will be all you need. It's downright naive to spend ten on a filling lunch between your circumstances and what you can only believe will happen, and you know that, but it feels nice in knowing you've done good reaching out, so rewarding yourself feels natural.

Inside of an hour, your gut is full and happy. You leave the pizzeria satisfied and growing increasingly lighter. The more time that passes, the more likely your sister has read your e-mail, and you know that it might be way too soon for her to have seen your message, but you're feeling lucky. Today is going to be a day of trials, but a day ending in an even greater reward than a few slices of pizza and a soda. You need to hurry on back to the library and open your e-mail client ASAP, and stay on for that second you see that new message alert. Once that happens-

"Aaawwwaaagh! Shit!"

That anguished shout, coupled with more swearing, piques your attention and breaks your chain of thought. Your heart is telling you not to look, but you turn to gaze in the direction of the commotion occurring about a quarter block away. A man, some kind of building contractor, has his shoulder clutched with his hand. You hear the word "skewered" from a bystander, and you can see the thick blood ooze from between his fingers and down his arm, his hand completely useless from stopping the leaking. The scene implies an accident instead of a crime; He doesn't describe a perpetrator, nor does his language mention it. But he does shout at his friend about five feet away from him, crawling sheepishly out of a building with a staple gun, for being a goddamn idiot.

"Oh... oh Lord! Oh, God, no!"

None of that matters to your animal hind-brain. The blood. There's way too much of it. Like from a memory you still vehemently remember with the sharpest accuracy. You can handle blood and mild gore on television, in fiction, you're not fooled, but this kind of bleeding, once identified as something that came out of some kind of violence, intended or not, clamps down tight on your body and mind and remains steadfast for as long as it wishes. Legs are shaken out of an encroaching paralysis you've grown good at predicting, and you turn heel and run.

You run fast, faster than you've made yourself in a long time. The frenzied running speed wakes up more monsters of the past and compels them into attacking viciously. That, in turn, launches your legs into a higher gear, which feeds the monsters, which make you flee even faster down the spire of self-composure, unaware of the people you clip, the streets you zoom across, the traffic and the hustle of this city nothing more than a blur.

You have to run for your life. You need to run away. The blood is too much. They're going to get you next. You need to find somewhere safe. Just keep running. Keep running. _Keep running if you want to live, goddammit!_

You don't even register the moving car whose path you cross until it's too late.


	10. Wounds

"Ow-how-howw...!"

You're knocked back into some of your senses from the blow and subsequent tumble onto the pavement. You groan as the pain registers in your side, but by some luck, the car was obeying the speed limit and had reacted quickly, and you were hit on the left, the same side your duffel bag had been slung over. That had proved to be an invaluable cushion to the strike. By all accounts though, had one of these factors not existed, you would have been seriously hurt.

A woman hastens out of her driver's seat, stunned and holding back from full hysterics as well as you are. "Oh my God! Sir, are you alright? I'm gonna call an ambulance!"

You first sit up, and quickly run down the list of injuries sustained. The point of impact hurts the most, the scrapes and cuts throughout your body sting like they're supposed to and, really, that's all you can tabulate. Nothing feels broken or dislodged, but you're going to bruise like hell. So, you stand up, look the confused woman in the eye, realizing what she is about to do, and dart off. The woman's concerned shouts are ignored wholly; Screw her car, screw the hospital, you need to save yourself!

Your booming heart makes you stop a block later, and you crawl into a shaded alleyway to lie down and rest before the organ explodes. You are still very much panicked, and the shortness of breath experienced from all that running comes as a further hindrance to calming down. You can't. Accusing, disembodied eyes train themselves and close in on you. It's all in your imagination, but this is paranoia built on years of reality, on particular moments that proved how harsh and terrible the world really is. On how horrible of a person you really are. Moments that are now freezing your being into a locked fetal position.

And your heart hurts so much, struggling to keep doing the one thing it was born to do that it stops often, for a singular second at a time, to take a breather. Occasionally, it lurches blood awkwardly through any of the four large tubes the organ connects to, and causes discomfort and further sweating than the exertion, panic and heat already provides. You're still so very focused on the psychic anguish from witnessing that assault but the physical agony makes you want to die.

Your heart soon begins to calm and ungnarl itself, but the relief is hardly noticed. Breath is eventually caught and evened out to an incredibly anxious yet stable rhythm, but it doesn't help stop those appallingly jagged knives from plunging into your consciousness and twisting them in impossible directions where all you can dare is panged whimpers. The turning of the blades, the sawing done by serrated, rusted edges, is a torture that proves rapidly intolerable. You'll have to make a deal with your personal demons to make it all go away.

"This one time," You finally start coaching yourself after many dolorous moments. "You just need to calm down. Just one, alright? Absolutely certain you can afford two or three, but one's all you need, alright?"

As though your body was another entity, it responded by relaxing and allowing you to stand. It wants this. It had to come to this, and you hate it, but you hate those intrusive thoughts wrapping their thick tentacles about you so tight you are unable to breathe. You need to break free from them, and find a bar now, and that is what you ultimately find.

You should've known from the very beginning that you wouldn't have stopped at just one, and you would berate yourself very severely if you weren't so numb to yourself and the world in such a way that it makes that glass of beer that had slipped down your weakened grip, slamming into the varnished counter, play out like some part of an oddly coherent dream. Your mind can't hold onto any one train of thought for too long with the exception of the question of how the hell you can afford... maybe four drinks? How in God's name has the bartender not cut you off? Maybe you only had three.

You rest your face against the counter so you can try thinking harder and without that nauseating sensation of the world spinning to distract you. The brim of your former roommate's stolen cap is low and hides your glazed eyes from view. You'd picked just one kind of drink for its price, alcohol content and the calories. Sucky way to get calories, you vaguely thought near the end of the second round, but what were you going to do after this? Buy dinner? You're too broke for dinner. This is killing two birds with one stone.

"One m're." Your tongue is barely able to form words anymore. Repetition and the soccer match on the TV above are your hypnotics. When you're not drinking at this point, you are numbly observing the world as it derealizes further.

You're given maybe drink number five (four?), and you clumsily down a third of the golden liquid. Now you loosely wonder how the hell you'll pay for maybe five drinks. Maybe if you nudge the glass back they'll only bill you for the portion you drank. 

Or maybe you're starting to lose all mental cohesiveness from the black out rushing in

Your head drops on to the counter again, and the darkness is left to cascade over you. You don't know what the bartender and some of his regulars are saying, but it's likely they're talking about you. All thought is let go with your vision, hearing, and every other sense as the alcohol finally knocks you out.

\---

_It's quite possible that whatever it is that's flowing through your nineteen-year-old veins is what's compelling you to keep dancing as you bake and sweat under the harsh lights of the club. You've had a rough week busting your ass and working multiple double shifts, so why not unwind with some overpriced, mixed drinks bought by an ID claiming your name is Dennis (and your age 22), an odd-looking pill, and some good old physical exertion? Maybe you shouldn't have taken that pill, but inebriation made it sound like a good idea and even now, roasting like a hog, it still is._

_You work your way through the crowds, dancing with whoever crosses your path, feeling too good to care whether or not they dance alongside for several esctatical moments or nervously and awkwardly scoot themselves away from you. The bass, the rhythm, the music commands you to keep going. You're not really in control anymore. So when it comes to pass that you meet that woman who is even more eager for a partner than you, you're merely going by her lead. An audible groan escapes your lips, and an infinite aura of a trance envelopes you not too long after she offers you a second of the same kind of pill to keep the party going. Chills tremble up and down your spinal column and spread into your limbs, down your fingers, then all shooting upwards and into your brain, exploding into ambrosial warmth, when your horny bodies embrace. Yes, this is the intimacy you've been craving for years. This is what you've been searching for. Love. You want love. To love. To _be_ loved._

_When you wake up the next morning, the nauseous, shameful bile is sieved into this strange woman's toilet. No, you were wrong. You rest your forehead on the porcelain, and observe your boxers, the one article of clothing left on. That intimacy was no more than primal lust, a fling. That was not the love you were searching for within that drug haze. You need love, but you don't quite remember the concept. It hasn't been felt in such a long time, and so you've forgotten what love feels like._

_Perhaps you're unlovable, or from the detached way of living, love is unobtainable in the first place. Perhaps you'll never find the kind of love you crave ever again._

\---

A hammer strikes your gooey brain, and your crusted, red-rimmed eyes are opened and rubbed clean of detritus. The sky is dark with tinges of orange coming from some unknown cardinal direction. You're in an alley. How you got there, both in location and in state, confounds you. Did you take some pills? What happened? Why are you here? Where's your bed? This is Nevada, right? No, you don't think this is Nevada. Where are you? ...Where are your things? Your things are gone.

"Oh, no. Where's m... Ugh, my head!" You clutch a hand to the front right portion, the epicenter of your agony. "Time to... Time... Gotta find... Oh God, I really need an aspirin."

You stabilize yourself on a trash can so you can stand up on wobbly legs. Once your vestibular sense kicks in right, you let go and take a step.

Sharp pain shoots up your ankle and takes you by surprise. You holler out, anchor yourself back onto the metallic cylinder and lift your injured appendage off the ground. You remember being hit by that car as clear as day now; The agony experienced now is a memento of that impact, and is a less obvious reminder of why that happened. With that knowledge, you can assume how you reacted, though you are stumped from why your ankle only now began having problems if you ran to a bar after that minor accident.

You test it out just in case it was merely a fluke. Another bolt shoots up, and you carefully, slowly, painstakingly sit back down to get a closer, dizzied look at the injury. You remove your shoe and sock and note that the area is bruised and swollen up.

"Doesn't feel broken." You mumble thoughtfully as you press down everywhere. "Could be a sprain, though. Can I handle walking?"

Moving the ankle in any way creates a sharp ring that you're unable to tolerate. Maybe it is broken after all, but regardless, you don't think this had to be caused only by getting hit; It's possible there could have been a minor injury, but you could have stumbled on it funny and compounded it to this state after blacking out at the bar. Crazy, you think as your headache continues to pound; Getting run over did little and yet a simple loss of balance had fucked you over. 

You pilfer through all your pockets to take stock of your money for an emergency trip to the pharmacy. You expected pennies and dimes and therefore futility in your actions, but found twenty-five dollars and an address in your back left pocket. Your shoulders lock up. It makes you feel a familiar discomfort that your physical torment thankfully banishes from your mind. The last thing you feel you should be doing is despairing over that huge mistake. There was a better way to become him.

Again, you stand up, sock and shoe loosely put back on, and you place as much weight to your good ankle as you're able to balance in this hangover and limp. It's unbearable pain, and dark spots splatter across your field of vision, but you soldier forth anyway. With this cash, regardless of how it was obtained, it can get you not only painkillers, but perhaps a cane or a splint or something. Asking several people gives you the direction where the closest pharmacy lies, a several block journey that takes half an hour and one round of light vomiting to accomplish. The sky gets brighter. You're gasping from every source of injury done to you the past day, and from the growing sunlight all around you, but especially from your ankle; This walk likely made your injury worsen considerably. It's Murphy's Law. This is the most physical discomfort you've felt in a while. You enter the pharmacy and sprawl into the counter, the pulsing in your ankle and your brain and your side and from all those dirty, inflamed, oozing cuts and scrapes twisting you into collapsing.

"My ankle hurts." You whine to the cashier. "My head... I... I can't walk anymore. I need help."

The cashier is overworked and wears darker circles around his eyes than yours, but he is greatly empathetic and it's a miracle that someone truly cares around here. He gets a chair for you to sit in, and you show him your budget and the where and how your ankle hurts. He fetches a bottle of the strongest aspirin available and a box containing the cheapest but most appropriate splint for you. 

"Looks like it'll be a little over thirty dollars." He tells you.

"But... I only got twenty-five." You say regretfully. "Even if I don't get the aspirin, it's still too much." You face all the facts of your situation. "But, you know, it's fine. I'm gonna need food anyway, and that's more important to basic survival than a busted foot. Maybe if I get a ruler and some bandage tape it'll be just as good."

"Sir," The cashier coughs. "It's no big deal. I can pay f-"

"And I'll need to use a cab or hitch a ride to... some kind of shelter. I have to. There's no way I should be walking on this. I... doubt you can sacrifice that much, I'm sorry..."

You hate this hangover. It's really messing with your ability to think, and with all your physical insults hurting so much, you don't quite realize the obvious logical fallacies in the needs you're expressing. Frankly, you are in hell.

"No, sir. It's alright. There's a shelter a few blocks away from here. I think it'll let you stay there as long as you want. You can let your ankle heal there if you don't want to go to the hospital, and it looks like you don't. Here, just let me bag your stuff and I'll help you get inside a taxi."

This exchange makes you feel deeply uncomfortable, which feeds into a growing, gnawing sensation of being highly ungrateful for all this sacrifice this man your age is giving you, which feeds into your discomfort even further. He hands you a small plastic bag and lets you lean on him to the curb. This doesn't feel right, especially when you have money on you. You talk to this helpful man, discussing that you can't accept all of this free help, in all good conscious. You offer all the money that you have, but he refuses. So, you reiterate, and instead offer twenty dollars to pay for most of what was given. The cashier is one tired, overworked, confused employee, and can't hold out on his position any more. He pockets the money to put into the register later, but insists, once a taxi is pulled up, to give out a destination to the driver and use his card to pay for your ride.

"Thank you, man." You flop into the backseat.

"Hey, a good person wouldn't leave another hanging."

"Right, right." You smile, and then quirk your eyebrows. "I just have one question."

"Yeah?"

"What... what city is this?"

The cashier's eyebrows hitch together as well. "This is New York, sir. Are... dude, you sure you're okay? No offense, but it sounds like you got a concussion. You sure you don't need a hospital?"

"No, but I'm hungover pretty bad. Got hit by a car yesterday, though. It's a long story, doubt I have time to explain. But thanks, I think I know why I'm here now."

"Uh," It's obvious that the cashier doesn't know how to react, but he flashes a grin. "No problem, I, uh, guess? Be sure to stop by when you can walk again, alright?"

"Sure, I'll be sure to remember that."

You nod, first to the helpful employee, and then to the cab driver, then wave once as you're driven away from this person and to the shelter you'll have to call home the next few days. The world, quite simply, just isn't fair. You hate that you're being largely outwardly ungrateful to this amazing person's assistance. Deep down, however, you know you're greatly thankful that you have what you need now, and you're going somewhere that, in theory, should protect you from the elements and give your injury enough time to mend.

Thinking, you try to solve the puzzle of why you're in New York City, of all places. Normally, small cities have been grown to be avoided by you, so you need to ponder this all out. Currently, you live in Nowhere, Nevada, and work at a gas station. Someone familiar had entered your place of work and reentered your life, and reminded you of everything you left behind and secretly, even to yourself, craved to go back to. Yet, why New York? Did someone important live here? Not your parents, you don't think. Your sister...?

Yes. That's it! Mabel. Once she is recalled you discover why you are here. The general timeline of the last two or so weeks unfurl, and at once you wish to both celebrate overcoming your latest bout of amnesia at the fastest rate yet, and feel disgusted that your plan had become bungled so terribly. You wanted to avoid the homeless shelter. It brings up too many unpleasant memories of that first downward spiral you suffered in Iowa. The last time you were in one of these shelters several residents had ran you out with pitchforks, threatening to have the cops put you away, threatening to kill you, threatening that God would be sure to damn you in Hell.

You hope against all of that first-hand empirical evidence that this time it'll be different. Nobody knows you here, and you haven't sunk down to a level where most people would react to your existence with an abhorrent disgust reserved only for bad people just yet. When the cab pulls up to the shelter, you crawl out and stare at the facade and the name of the facility so long that the car has to be several blocks away when you finally snap out of it.

"It's going to be fine, Dipper." If there's any relief to be felt it's that you finally called yourself by your name without error, but other than that, you feel tense. "No, really. It's going to be okay. This... you gotta do this, but you'll have plenty of time to rest. Once you feel better, you can leave, and you can get back to finding Mabel." You swallow. "Okay, here we g-ow, dammit!"

The injury reignites as you take a step forward, and like before it is ignored for an immediate goal in mind. For the sake of your sanity, you plead that you'll have a tranquil enough time here.


	11. Shelter

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Aaaaa thank you for the comments! I know I don't go around replying to comments or even really posting these kinds of notes regularly, but you guys are the greatest!

Intake is a pain in the ass, and the hangover you are soldiering through only serves as another hurdle in getting yourself some needed rest on some rickety bed. They didn't like that you were displaying the obvious symptoms of a hangover, and searched your body for a flask as an aggravating precaution. Their rough handling of you twisted your ankle a little more, and your yelp is their first hint that you've been standing on a bad ankle, which astounds you given you had floundered into the building uttering swears at each limping stride.

They seem uninterested in wanting to ship you to a hospital once you insist you simply need rest, and they did pick up the pace in taking you in for your sake. Now you are sitting down on a tough bed in the sleeping quarters, finally able to attach that splint and take more aspirin than what the bottle recommends to treat that injury. You sprawl out on your bed and relax into the toughened springs, albeit grateful you have a cushion to lay on.

"Oh yeah. I definitely needed this." You hum gently, privately, and stretch your limbs with some level of complacently. "Though this bed probably will destroy my back."

A sigh of contentment escapes your lips anyway. The pain, while it likely won't subside very markedly, is beginning to ebb thanks to the painkillers and supporting splint limiting how much your foot can move and thus keeping yourself from aggravating your injury. You're able to discern that your ankle had suffered a sprain, possibly minor at first, and maybe still somewhat minor, you hope, given your ability to still technically walk, but you worry you might have done permament damage lurching around on it. You sigh. The last thing you want in your journey back to a meaningful life would be a disability.

Someone takes pity on you and hands you one of their old books to help distract away from the pain, and while you don't like this book, you still appreciate the gesture. Another person helps to get the foot elevated with pillows from the other beds. You decided to ask both if they knew of Mabel's whereabouts; They had no clue. Conversation with others are kept to a minimal, though with more people crossing paths with where you lay, you ask that same question more, only to get the same answer. Admittedly, you are still very discouraged in asking, and the feeling grows each time you ask, but you do it anyway to try and make up for lost time.

You learn a lot of things in your first day here alone; Your old roommate's hat was embroidered with the logo and slogan for some Oklahoman steakhouse he must've gone to, you learn that the computers here are "considered" to be functional but the Internet here is spotty at best, it is very boring lying here and yet you refuse to do any more walking aside for food and bathroom breaks and the occasional rooting around donation bins for fresh clothing, you've bruised like hell as predicted, and your own scabs give you strong, mental discomfort that is eased when a peer with a rudimentary medkit offers to treat and patch up your wounds. Your heart skips a beat when you ask him about Mabel and he says that he has heard of her, and even seen her around, now that he thinks about it, but adds that he regretfully doesn't know where she specifically lives. He offers to be as helpful as he can, though, and promises the next time he's out and about to tell her of you if she crosses paths with him.

And most importantly, you think, you love staring at that photograph and thinking of Mabel. It makes you think that she probably does the same with her copy from time to time, and you believe in the idea of the both of you wondering if they'll ever see their twin once more. You like that idea.

Not too long after nightfall, you test out your foot with no one at your side assisting you. It's still too highly unpleasant to want to walk on, but you come to the conclusion, after going to the bathroom, that your rest is paying off. You work out as you nestle in your ironcast bed that it might take a week before you can leave, which is both a relief and a distress. Honestly, you really wish you could leave tomorrow. You need to get back to finding Mabel, and as of now there is a flickering hope that your things are lying around intact somewhere, fading as time passes and the chance of your two bags being irreparibly pilfered rises exponentially.

You try not to worry about it too hard, however, and as you close your eyes you resign yourself to having to go through this little detour. You have no choice but to go through this. Your imagination takes hold and forms abstracted scenarios within your dozing state as they lull you to full sleep, in the dark of the room with many others, their mumbling a sweet sound that relaxes with their unrhythmic lullaby.

_You're reliving that terrible moment all over again, under terrible new circumstances._

_It had happened all too quickly. You and your friend were here to discuss a problem with two other guys regarding supply. You had been beaten down and stared down the barrel of a gun, but your friend came to your aid by attacking the person responsible for keeping you in a strangle hold. The result, however, was a gunshot ringing out into the voids of space._

_You're reexperiencing endless turmoil._

_"Cal... help me..."_

_The perpetrators had fled in the several seconds between the shooting and now. You can't help but watch warm blood gush out of your friend's chest at an alarming rate._

_"Dude, why aren't you h-helping me...?"_

_Even if you were to grab his cellphone and call for help, it'd be futility. You have a feeling his aorta was punctured; He'll be dead in ten minutes. And besides, you're convulsing way too violently to dial or hold a phone. Again, there's nothing you can do to mitigate this situation of your making._

_"Oh God. Please, Cal..."_

_You're brain is locked in that moment from long ago. You can't help it. It takes all of your might not to crumple over and sob, but that leaves you with the worse alternative, frozen panic._

_No, not again. Not again. NOT AGAIN._

_He loses consciousness in minutes, and another handful of minutes later, as your freakout becomes greater and greater, he dies._

_When you skip town later that night, you make sure to stop by the nearest bar for two or three drinks, then make a small detour to a liquor store for a supply you hope will last you to wherever it is you'll end up. You don't mind if it happens to be your unmarked grave._

You can't stop yourself from breaking down and sobbing uncontrollably. That nightmare, that memory, was so incredibly real that it has left you in the pitch of night, unable to see the many others stirring about and causing your still-activated imagination to go rogue.

Tentacles, you swear to God actual tentacles, lift you up and wrap around your shoulders. You believe you're about to be killed by an enemy of your recent past and throw a defending fist into a fleshy roll of fat, then another, but those appendages are joined by two more. This only serves to fuel your quaking panic episode, and you punch with more ferocity, crying all the while. Four become six, six quickly becomes eight, and you're pinned down, unable to protect yourself.

"No, please! I saw nothing! I don't wanna die!"

Blinding light bathes the sleeping quarters and enlightens you to the reality of what just happened. Now everyone in the room is awake and ornery at you being a loud, violent disruption, but you've stopped wanting to dish out your onslaught. Now, you're apologizing to the people unlucky enough to get hit by your flailing fists. You offer to help stop a man's nosebleed in spite of your urge to vomit at the sight, realizing you've awoken from one nightmare and into another.

However, you're led onto your feet and ushered out the room, where it returns to darkness and, soon enough, tranquility. You're not exactly sure where you're headed in both your physical and mental agony, and it leads you down another avenue of deep worry.

"I had a nightmare! It was... Oh my God, it was watching someone I knew be killed, but it really happened. Like, for real, it happened, and I had a dream where it all came back! A-and it was so real that when I woke up I was disorientated so I ended up attacking... You gotta believe me! I'd never invoke something like that on purpose! It was an accident! Who are you? Where are you taking me? I'm not a bad person! I-!"

"Sir, you need to calm down."

"How can I do that if I don't know what's going to happen next?"

Your question is audibly pressured and demanding of an explanation, but you receive none. You are sat down in the center seat of the office of, you guess, whoever runs the place during the night. That man shows up with two things for you: A glass of water and, after your explanation, a terse warning that he'd be looking the other way just this once.

Alright then, you think, so long as you're able to discern fantasy from reality instantly whenever you have a nightmare you should be okay. You realize this could, by your luck, be easier said, but for now you express your deepest thanks to be given one more shot, and you're given the time and place for a veteran support group within the premises. When you're back in bed, you let out an airy, breathless laugh at the assumption made of your life. You suppose you can think of your experiences as part of a war, albeit one that was waged internal, forming guilt and shame from different sources but from the same overall reason, more or less, than the battle-scarred heroes.

Only difference? You know you're far from being considered a hero. What led you to those horrors was cowardice, and that cowardice in-of-itself the result of a freak accident, and, of course, those horrors led to cowardice, causing one huge behavioral loop you wish to break free from. You stare at the inky blackness that is the ceiling, wondering if you deserve clemency for every single one of your morally dubious actions the past decade, before exhaustion catches up and lulls you to duller dreams.

Several nights later, your eyes shoot open. The loud yelp that escapes your lips rouses you out of the same nightmare. Your breath is high up in your lungs and you can hardly breathe. It's dark, and continues to remain dark as the others are woken up by varying degrees to your shout. Several grumble at you again to give them some sleep, this being the third night in a row, but most say nothing. You, however, are paralyzed in your bed, making shallow gasps for air, mind reeling and racing and leaving you absolutely convinced in the dark that you're still in a nightmare, but notsomuch aware of the warning you were given just enough to keep still than the crippling fear wracking your soul.

A whining sound emanates from your throat, and it twists itself to a soft cry. Someone slams his palm onto the iron bar of his bed and shouts at you to shut up. You jump in your bed and go silent, but it doesn't cure you of your catatonic state. It makes you begin to acknowledge your surroundings, sure, but you lie there, absolutely still, afraid of the dark corners hiding those two men that killed your friend so barbarically, afraid of being killed if you let your guard down, afraid of seeing friends and loved ones lying on the asphalt with grevious injuries, afraid of more death.

The admonishment leaves you unable to voice the quietest of whispered sobs, the one sieve you had, and so all of that nervous, frightful, hot energy is pent up and left to exhaust itself from within a thermosed body via uncomfortable sweating and shaking. And when you do finally dare to move, you wrap your arms across your chest for a one-person hug the remainder of the night.

The hatred you'd normally feel for shelter food is greatly subdued this morning from your lack of sleep and residual anxiety. Once the room you were trembling in started glowing with the radiant light of dawn, you had began calming down considerably, as without any dark corners, you could see that there were no foreboding shadows of your past lurking within them, and your frozen muscles melted into an exhausted pile. You couldn't sleep, though. Too many horrible memories pranced about your mind to give you the respite you desperately needed regardless of how safe the outside world turned out to be.

Maybe this is why you listlessly chew this subpar food. More likely, it's your hunger getting the better of you, and it's your tiredness that lets you tolerate this precious junk a bit more. Food is food, after all, and you're broke. This is the best you can do.

Broke. Only fifty-two cents to your name. You had given your remaining five dollars to a mother with her three children in tow, supposing that she'd use the money much better than you would. You had asked her about Mabel, and like all before her, she had nothing useful to say. You've developed a small reputation as a crazy; Once you had let slip by to another resident that you were the lost brother of Mabel Pines, the assumed claim painted you as some obsessed freak, and on top of your now habit of waking up screaming in the night, virtually no one comes directly to you to talk anymore. You have to concede that your situation here is somehow better than your previous shelter experience. No one is bothering you at least, though with nobody to distract you, you retreat into your mind and let your fears take hold.

Frankly, though, you're stumped and discouraged. Money is what fuels your search, and you have none. All of your things are gone, pilfered and divvied between several people at least, most likely. And you had gotten distracted in your journey, had gotten careless with the money you once had. If only you held onto that five dollars. Perhaps you are destined to live a nomadic, homeless life for however remaining years you have left. That is, if by some eversion of a miracle, you can continue tolerating these conditions, and you're sure you can't.

You stumble up onto your feet, slackened over yourself, and wander back to bed, for a time, then grab the freshest set of second-hand clothing you had collected over the days and wait your turn for a cleansing, tiring shower. It's odd, but lately showers make you feel lightheaded, and this time around it's a doozy and you spring onto your bed to get the blood back in your brain, so you've gravitated towards baths whenever possible. You hate baths, but each time you shower your heart struggles in some way against the humid steam to keep you standing, so they've grown to a necessary evil, when the option to bathe arises. Now, you're attempting to prepare yourself to walk out of here, ankle practically healed, in a little while, and you want to be cleansed beforehand from your six days stewing in your sweat before you head out. To where, you don't know, until you found yourself picking through your pants pockets and found a scrap containing an address.

It reminds you of that cash you had inexplicably found, and so you think you're gonna need some peace of mind before starting back on your quest. Whoever it was that gave you this scrap had better not have... well... you'd rather not think about it. It's better not to think about that sort of thing.


	12. Tapes

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is coming with a warning for pretty strong, potentially triggering content. It doesn't get explicit, at least I don't think, but going to be updating the tags for this.

You stare at the crumpled up address you had haphazardly shoved in your wallet days ago. The bus had dropped you off several blocks past your destination, but it was your fault for not paying attention. You backtrack and take a left the last remaining blocks, looking for that number on an apartment complex. You walk down that entire block and fail to find that number, so you cross the street and walk back down the block. Still nothing, but you note you were heading down the right side of the street the first time. Circling back, you walk slowly down the block once more, taking careful stock of every single facade you come across, observing the addresses as you find them as they slowly wind down.

When you find the address, you can hardly believe it. This doesn't look like it should be an apartment building, and yet when you pass inside after someone who is leaving lets you in, you can't argue against the truth laid out in front of you. It's a short walk up a flight of stairs and halfway down the hallway for you to reach the second half of the scrawled address. Stopping at the door labeled 2E, a wave of uneasiness washes over you. It's highly likely that whoever gave you the mystery twenty-five dollars is behind this door, and a chill runs through your bones when you think of the possibilities of how that money ended up in your hands. Maybe you sucked someone off. No, you made a deal with yourself. It's a vague recollection, but it rings right. It shouldn't have been that. Not since then. _Never again._

When you knock on the door, you hear something shift from behind. Trash bags being thrown out of the way, and aluminum cans being kicked and crumpled under the weight of a full-grown human. In an instant a short but heavy man in an off-white dress shirt, mismatched with a pair of ratty black jeans, covered with dark stubble under a pair of wily eyes cracks open the door and looks at you.

"Oh, hey! A-about time you finally got here!"

The door shuts and you hear him undoing the locks so he can promptly usher you inside his abode. You look around the mess that is meant to be a home. You don't think this man has cleaned his place in months, if not years. Garbage bags litter the walkway and the central area, where it is joined by a plethora of piles; One is for laundry, another is a demolished pile of beer cans, and another is a discordant pile of papers and envelopes, many with red stamps marked across them. Was... that a cockroach that skittered across them?

As for the man himself, he is scratching at his arms, specks of red dotting and ruining an article of clothing you wish you had. It looks like he might have shaved in the past week, albeit one cheek is much lighter in hair than the other. This man is, without a doubt, a wreck.

"I got hurt and couldn't walk." You shrug. "I have to know. Were you the reason I found money in my pocket?"

"Sure was!" He stops with his scratching and chuckles. "Wow, you blacked out like a madman! Y-"

"What did I do to earn that?" Your voice is even, demanding, and scared.

He hastily shrugs. "You're homeless, aren't you? Got nothing?" You nod at his quick interrogation. "Well, you couldn't pay for your tab, so I did you a solid, and gave you another twenty-five and the address to my place because I decided to lug your stuff back here for safekeeping. I mean I don't have much, but it was the le-"

A weight lifts off of your stomach and your voice rises. "My stuff? You mean my bags?"

"Yeah!" He wanders off to a cleaner corner of his abode and pulls out your duffel bag and your backpack, then tugs urgently at his dress shirt, unable to hold back anymore. "Everything's there. I'm sure it'd suck for you to lose everything you have, so I thought why not? You were really _really_ shitfaced."

"Oh!" You brighten and ease your shoulders. "That's... thanks, man! To be honest, I don't think I could've been able to walk around with those bags on me anyway but, oh man, I thought I lost all my stuff! Thank you so much...!"

"Hey, no skin off my back. And the name's Perry." Perry smiles with a little too much teeth towards you, but you take it as, hopefully, another quirk from a weird man with a weird set of clothes and weird tics. "So, how'd the twenty-five bucks treat you?"

There is a nervous glance to the right, then your eyes meet his again. "Uh... p-pretty well."

"Good, good." 

You glance upwards, noticing a stain in the ceiling, then sigh. "You know, I don't really like the idea of free stuff nowadays, and it looks like you could get some cleaning done. If it means anything I'd do anything to help..."

Perry's ears pick up. "So... wait, you want to pay off your debt? I... I wasn't expecting that. Oh God... Hold on, let me think this through."

He turns away from you and shuffles nervously about in place. On one hand, you feel this doesn't bode well for you. On the other, you wish, now that you know how the money got there, and by the conditions this man is living in, to not only pay back, but do this man a solid as well for keeping your stuff safe. But on your first hand, with the way this man is awkwardly bobbing his head, tugging still at his dress shirt, and bobbling about on his feet...

He bounds straight into your face before you can complete that thought. "Actually, I was kinda thinking of something else you could do to pay it off."

You are slow to understand what this man is saying until one abnormally large, lithe hand grabs you tightly by the shoulder, and the other vice-like about your junk. You produce a tiny, shocked, uneven yelp from the lower hand's movements; All the mental alarms that should have gone off earlier are blaring.

"H-hey, what are you doing?!" Another shift sends a ripple tingling down your spine. "Stop it! The fuck's wrong with you?!"

His voice goes up half an octave for a mocking sing-song effect. "You told me you'd do anything to pay my good generosity back, man..." He punctuates with a flirt of his hand across your chest, and a rough tug of his dress shirt and your crotch.

You had called it earlier. You had ignored it because you hate asking for help as a homeless person without some kind of payment back. You are such a fucking idiot for not wanting to believe in goodwill. You should have kept your mouth shut, taken your shit, and gotten out of here.

"Well, yeah!" Your Adam's apple bobs. "But not this! What the hell?!"

"And yet you suggested paying me back?" Perry appears incredibly itchy, fighting the desire to scratch.

"I... I'd do whatever to... I mean, I, uh..." You look down, eyebrows knitted in a defeated pattern. "I guess."

Perry grabs you by the chin so he can force a gaze into your brown eyes and starts massaging with his other hand. This fucker. He's trying to get a rise out of you, make you cave to primal desires, and, oh God, it's actually _working_. A memory erupts like a flash-bomb. _You don't want this to happen._

Your arms have been foolishly left free, and you collect wild energy and release it with a mighty hook that knocks him off-balance and down onto his ass.

"Fuck off! I'm not going to do that, okay?! You know what? Forget I said I'd help you!"

You see him angrily skitter backwards, crab-like, burrowing into trash, and you also step backwards until you're near your things. Just need to grab both bags and get the hell out of here. The backpack is slung onto your back and you grasp the strap to the duffel bag.

You hear a gun cock.

Your heart is trying to complete a jail break from your rib cage. Up to now, your heart had been beating hard, but holding fast to the belief things would turn out okay. He had been clumsy in leaving himself open, perhaps not having done this before. Now, your heart is in a panic and is beating faster and faster and beginning to trip over itself. It discovers that there will be no good way out of this hell.

"You're not thinking of killing me over money?! Only a loser would do that!" Those words, wavery as they were, somehow had the bravery to form. It seemed he was allowing you to respond. Uneven footfalls edge closer, until the teasing cold of metal nestles into a lock of your hair. "H-h-hey, I was only joking! Don't kil-!"

The crook of an arm wraps itself around your neck. "Shut up!" He hisses, sounding insane and, insanely, as scared as you.

You can't shout, speak, nor breathe. Limbs too paralyzed in horror to flail about, mind locked in fear, your one recourse is to produce choking sounds when you're dragged off your feet and so much pressure accumulates against your windpipe that you fear your face is going to burst open.

"Now, I don't want to hurt you, but I want you to cooperate. The faster we get this done," His breathing hitches. "...The f-faster you can leave. Well? What do you say?"

He lets go of your throat, and you collapse, heart jumping into your larynx, beating as rapidly it can physically go. You cough and suck in air to scare off the darkness lurking around your periphery.

"I'm gonna call the cops the second I leave!" Perhaps you're assuming death is your one best option.

"And say what?" He scoffs and pulls you back up with a strong arm hooked under your armpits. "You think they're going to listen to a bum like you?" Mentally, you call his bluff. "And seriously, if I kill you, is anyone seriously going to miss you?"

You stare big, owlish eyes into his rabid glints. "What..."

"Y-your family probably either hates you or is all dead, and it looks like you have no friends either, am I right?" He mumbles so furiously into your ear, but what he says is like a punch to the gut. "You're a friendless, family-less piece of shit."

"...And you're a bastard."

You're sneering, yet those white hot tears rolling down your cheeks belie the suicidal bravado you're hoping will scare off this predator. His response is to push the gun's muzzle until the barrel is making a pressurized mark on your temple, reminding you that you are nothing more than prey. A reminder that is equally backed by the utter speed, intensity and too frequent missteps of your heart. You're trapped.

"Oh God, oh God, oh God," You're hyperventilating. "Please! I don't want any of this! I don't want to be fucked or killed! Y-you can take everything I have! I have a laptop! Please, for the love of God, if it makes us even! Just take it!"

Oh God, if it means your safety you will give up the e-mail. There's no way around it. You hate this fact, but have to accept it. You think you can do something very similar that'd be just as good but you can't quite think of what that could be.

"Your laptop is shit!" The man twists the barrel as he edges closer to your face. "Not even worth ten bucks with how old it fucking is. And your clothes are probably all covered in shit! Like I don't have enough of _that_ already! You're really trying my patience!"

Dying is supposed to hurt, usually. You're certain this is what dying feels like, complete with electric stinging piercing your slimy brains trying to incapacitate all rational thought. Preferably, you'd rather have death happen quickly with a gunshot than deal with the slower death the man's kinder demand requires of you.

He notices you were really starting to cry before you could realize it, and tries to soothe with breath against your ear. "Hey, shh... I promise I'm gonna be gentle. I want you to enjoy it as much as I will. I mean, you've been through so much. You deserve some fun and companionship. A-and you were _kinda_ starting to get into i-"

"Stop," You sniffle, struggling against him and yourself to maintain composure. "I would actually prefer to be shot dead."

"C'mon, you don't mean that." He's sweet-talking you and you know it, brain damage be damned.

"I do. You sure you don't want my stuff?"

His mood turns on a dime again and he snarls; You're certain he's really chemically unbalanced. "What did I just say, you fucking idiot?!"

"Not even my pills?"

Your question came naturally, matter-of-factly, sadly, but never had it been considered as something in of itself. The gun quakes against your skull, then the muzzle, warmed by your body heat, is no longer in contact with your skin.

"What kind are they?" He is curious.

"Uh... I-I think they're called, uh... h-here, I'll show you." He lets you go and follows you to your duffel bag, and you carefully unzip and search through the contents, until you pull out a Ziploc bag half-full of small, neon blue pills.

"...Shit, dude." He's impressed. "You got _that_? _All_ of _that_? You're sitting on some pretty nice cash here...!" He clasps a hand over his mouth and sobs. "How did I not...? I... I need this. I can't believe I'm saying it. Been trying to get just a couple of these for weeks but the price keeps jacking itself up and up and up! It's crazy! It's insane! It's been driving me insane!"

He crumples onto the floor and starts crying, tossing the gun aside and pulling at his hair. "These things are the only things that make me happy anymore! Oh God, I'm so pathetic... I'm so sorry... I'm... I didn't mean for all of this to happen. I don't know how much more I can take without it."

You can't feel sympathy for that. You feel sympathy over that smothering feeling of being trapped in a solitary hell, but not that.

"Right," You seethe. "Because saying that's gonna make everything all better."

"I know." He hangs his head low, and you wonder if you can stomp on this guy in the jewels as revenge since his position is so vulnerable. But, you'd only sink to his level. "Dude," He pleads to you. "Just give me, like, half of what you got."

"What?" You're hit with a nostalgic sense of dread. It's Iowa again. John's shame.

"I need it. I... I-I can't... I mean, look, I can spend a hundred on half of what you've got. I swear, I'll pace myself better. I'm not gonna take no for an answer!"

His veiny hands grab at the gun again and points it at you once more, and you feel another ghost of your past wrap its cold arms into your shoulders. Calvin. That feeling of sulfuric solitude you'd sympathized from this decrepit man has turned around to become a first-hand experience once more. You nod briskly on impulse, he puts the gun down, and wanders up to you and your bag.

You feel a hollowness in your eyes, your body when he carefully takes your bag, scoops a little over half onto a dirty plate that was left out, and shoves a handful of twenties inside the little plastic baggie and back to you. No, you don't want to do this in the slightest. Of the now three post-realities this incident has presented, you still wish death had been your fate above the other two. You realize now it's about preserving your dignity. You want to be the kind of person worthy of your sister when you finally drag yourself up to her.

But yet, you can't exactly do that if you're dead.

But, if you were dead, you'd at least still have your dignity.

You don't know which you'd rather have.

Perry is giddy. Already, he's swallowed two of them. You pick the money out of the bag and into your wallet, and you hear phantoms of the past yell and insult you. They are not happy with your actions. You should have picked death. It is nobler to die than become a criminal. And yet, the other choice to avoid death, the one not taken, the one rescinded by Perry in favor of his favorite vice, sits just as poorly. You remember now what you did to obtain Liam's ID as clear as the digital recording of those dirty little scenes, and hope against logic that the video is hidden in such dark depths that nobody will ever find it, but someone had to. The footage exists somewhere. You hate yourself for agreeing to that idea. _Never again_.

Perry's excited mumbling brings you back out of your head for a moment. Dear God, is he snorting a couple more pills he smashed up? He is. He's fucking insane. Do you look this insane when you're high on this stuff? You're much more despondent now you've come to realize you've fed an addict. This money was probably going for rent, or food, or anything else. This is probably almost all he has.

You...

You'll take it.

This'll be your damnable pyrrhic revenge.

His entire body slackens, and he giggles. "Everything is so small..." He laughs. "Holy crap this is strong shit! N-not even half a pill can give half the z-zing of... of the... this... hoah, shit!"

You put your closed bag of pills back into your duffel and zip the larger bag up tight. It's hefted on a shoulder and you slowly back away while Perry rockets higher and higher into the sky at a dizzying pace. Already he's too incoherent, mumbling himself towards delirium. He sees you and giggles more.

"You're a miracle man, you know that? A magic man. Sorcerer man. King Arthur with his sword. A king. God. Are you God?"

When he stumbles onto the floor you hastily leave him for the door to his apartment. He wonders where you went, but doesn't follow. Part of you wants to stay here if only to assure that he comes out of this okay, but most of you wants to get the fuck out of here as fast as your body will allow, and the majority rules in your final choice.

The apartment building is left, your spine straight and stiff, heart slowing but hammering still. You let all mental defense go at keeping the electrical discharge at bay, and have it wash over and drown you until you are physically nothing more than a shambling exoskeleton, internally an emotional hurricane. You're lost. You can't think. You want to hide somewhere deep underground and never return.

By some magic, you retreat all the way to Central Park about a few blocks away and you nestle into the first possible place you can hide, underneath a walking bridge. Permanent relief is needed so badly, but Mabel's pure visage acts like a mental blockade and prevents you from going any farther down that avenue than ideations.

You can't kill yourself, but you need to kill something so _badly_ , and not even the thoughts of your sister keep you from acting depraved simply on the basis that you feel no more than a slovenly, depraved lowlife. Two of those accursed pills are taken, then two more, and what the hell, two more, and you wait for the joy that can be found in that forever nothing your ensuing blackout will provide for you. You don't care if you'll soon be acting like a drooling idiot like Perry. You don't care if you can overdose. You don't care about your heart.

All you need is relief.


	13. Hangover

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> That feeling when you're trying to write something (vaguely) original and you're so blocked that instead you work on this. Eh, at this rate it'll take about ten years to write that book. No big deal. :T
> 
> Also, this chapter ended up being really long, so I split it up into two parts so I can end it on a cliffhanger and grin sadistically at the torment I'm bringing everyone.

_Never in your life, before or since, have you been this inexorably cold. It makes little sense, given how several of the towns you stopped to live in were situated way in the northern states, where winters are designed to kill in one way or another. You'd never expect being this cold in a place such as Iowa, but a cruel arctic blast proves you otherwise._

_You're cursed, what can you say?_

_You are not as well dressed for this weather as you could have been. Maybe if you had saved up your meager earnings from doing rotten things for an extra coat instead of blowing it on trips to the pharmacy for a number of numbness-inducing chemicals, your toes wouldn't feel as ready to fall off as they do now._

_In one plastic bag is your supplies from your latest trip, and another is some kindling you've collected and some other sundries. Some would call you completely insane not to go to a shelter, but you're certain you've made way too many enemies to want to show your face. At least one person recognized you there last you went, and they were more than happy to shout at how you're ruining lives. It was painful to hear. They were right. Honestly, you didn't mean to hurt them, or anyone. You simply wanted not to starve._

_You find a very quiet alley in which to make camp for the night, and you sit in one of the few dry spots and dump the kindling into a small heap. The book of matches you'd found earlier is wet and useless and somehow dumped with the rest, but you take out a new lighter from your bag. It takes a long time before something dry enough catches the flame and starts a pathetic, little fire that is threatened by the constantly shifting winds. You have no recourse but to pull out a water bottle with only half of this liquid which is clearly not water, and pour until you have a healthy pyre going. It's half-expectation that a strong wind is going to blow some flaming wad of newspaper out of the campfire and into a passerby. Whether by luck or karma, you assume, it will undoubtedly happen._

_You pull out your two things you bought at the pharmacy; Some cheap vodka and cough syrup, an oldie but a goodie for a good brain blast. The latter is swigged down and the former is guzzled to as much as you've learned you can handle. Then, for the main course, you take a small, used rag from your other bag, douse it in gas from the water bottle, and huff to your heart's content._

_There's not much else you can do with your life now._

\---

"...ey. H... ir. Wak...p. ...ir? He... sir! Ca... hear me?"

Your thoughts feel very loose and free-form, but slowly they become more coherent as the person continues to talk your drowsily writhing body back into the world. You open your eyes and discover that you've somehow found your way out of... wherever the hell you came from. Was it under a bridge? An alley? It's hard to tell.

The chest pain signifies that you may have taken more pills, which your blackout, paradoxically, can reaffirm. You feel disgusting from all the grime, sweat and dirt caking your exposed skin and clumping your hair. The bottle of water you're offered is guzzled up with no real cognizance of who or where it came from, only with the knowledge that you feel very dehydrated and it's there. Another bottle is offered, and you take it with just as much vigor as the first.

"You doing alright there?" Some finessed hand pats you reassuringly on the shoulder.

"Yeah. Thanks." Your voice sounds parched. Just how long were you outside?

"Okay. That's good. We were getting real worried. You were out for a while, and it didn't look like the A/C was working on you."

It's beginning to occur to you that this woman hovering above you is certainly wearing a lot of blue, very much like your saving angel that had pulled you from a chilly fate into all-encompassing warmth, and very much like a police officer. And then it hits you that she is, in fact, an officer, and you snap to attention.

"Wait. Where am I?"

You sit up and fight back the urge to go ballistic. You're inside a police car that feels way too big, parked in the middle of a city block that is absolutely foreign and strange to you. Past the windshield you can see another police car sitting several spots down, and three tiny-looking officers on the sidewalk. You're certain you're still fairly high; Past knowledge of taking this drug lets you know you're experiencing lilliputian hallucinations right now, among other sensory anomalies. One of them spots you, and you can vaguely hear him mention to his cohorts that you've come to.

"Someone called about a delirious looking man bumbling about and almost getting run over. We found you not too long ago sweating real hard and looking pretty confused."

Stammering gibberish is all you can do with your nerves fraying this terribly. It's also possible the drug is making it hard to verbalize formal thoughts. You try to make any sort of affirming vocalization to show that you understand, but your panic leaks through your fingers when one of the officers in the circle pauses to look at you. It's Henderson. You somehow remember. You're so fucking toast.

"Sir, are you okay?" The woman asks. "Do you feel like you need medical attention?"

Your dried throat and racing thoughts prevent you from even making a mewl as he slowly meanders his way towards this car.

"Sir? Sir?" The officer is beginning to get concerned towards your glassy stare. "Do you feel feverish? Are you aware of what's happening? Do you need to get to the hospital?"

"Well, well." Henderson surprises his peer, and she steps back so he can tower over you and grow to an impossible size. "Thought I told you not to get into anymore trouble."

"I-" Henderson's scent is like sulfur, but more... alabaster. Where'd that word come from?

"You know this man, Paul?"

"Maybe. Homeless man, so I see a lot like them. Will admit, he looks familiar."

"I see. It explains why he's out in this heat."

"Kinda, but he looks pretty loopy right now." The grin he flashes you shines like a collection of daggers, and you temporarily hallucinate that his teeth really are knives. "Best we take him in and run some drug tests."

"No! Please! I just feel a little weak from the heat! My heart doesn't work too well also, so I'm always kinda weak anyway. I-"

The police woman looks at you apologetically, sorry that her cohort had convinced her of this plan. "Sir, I'm afraid we'll have to take you in."

Henderson nods, then gestures you with his hand, fingernails appearing like long and jagged claws. "C'mon, buddy. Gotta cuff you."

"Do you really think that's necessary?" The woman officer asks.

"Well, yeah! Reminds me, we should probably check and see if he's holding as well."

You had sat up and hesitantly stepped out of the car while this little back-and-forth happened. Your heart is sinking incredibly fast in tandem with your hopes and dreams of seeing Mabel again. It's hard to say whether or not your urine later on is going to rat you out, but they're going to find your pills, and they're going to find your wallet, with the plethora of fake IDs within.

The best you can do is do whatever Paul asks of you, which in the current moment includes turning around, putting your hands on your head, and letting him pilfer through every one of your pockets. It's really hard not to cry, and harder not to kick Paul in the shins so you can bolt. Crying will only raise suspicions, and running will exacerbate the pain in your chest, not to mention get you in more trouble. The other two officers hover close and merely observe your trembling form. You close your eyes and start to chant a mental mantra: Prison won't be so bad, prison won't be so bad.

"Bud, is this some kind of joke you're pulling?"

You open your eyes and glance back at Paul. "What?"

"All of your pockets are empty!" Paul growls. "What gives?"

"I, uh... what?"

"Where's your wallet?!" Paul shouts in your ear, and you flinch backward.

"I... I dunno." This news should be relieving you; Instead, the news that your wallet is missing pulls you into a different kind of turmoil that socks you until you cry.

"Jeez, bud. Quit the crying crap!" Paul pulls your hands behind your back and slaps on a pair of handcuffs that gnaw and nibble at your wrists.

"I told you, I don't know! I... I need the photo! I need to find my wallet! The photo! M-my sister! It's important! I need to see her!" You can't imagine why now, but the photo feels like a protecting amulet. A precious teddy bear.

"Calm down, sir..." The woman soothes. "We can try and figure out what happened. If it got stolen, we can help catch the guy."

"N-no. No thanks. I mean... I don't think it was stolen?"

"Are you sure? You appear to be having some kind of memory lapse right now."

"I'm... I'm sure."

This is all you can venture in saying as Paul shoves you back into the now claustrophobic police car from which you woke up in, and he and the woman officer climb into the front and drive you off to their station. They don't do much questioning taking you there, and neither do they start when they put you in a holding cell.

You are free to pace about and often, you shamble to the front and latch onto the bars for a minute or two, then the tension gets too much and you pace about some more, until a pair, ornery about their own situation, absolutely shriek at you to chill out. You scramble backwards and shiver in the corner, next to the drunk passed out against the wall, riding the waves of heart flutters and clicks back to that subtly worsening baseline. Staring at the clock at the end of the hall makes you swear that time itself is meaningless; It slows down and picks up so many times that it only adds to your agitation, though, as you observe, time seems to be stabilizing, and that is a sign you're getting wholly sober.

Paul arrives soon enough, right on cue with your aching bladder, leads you to a bathroom, and hands you a cup that you soon hand back with that payload. He lets you completely empty yourself then hands you a washcloth and comb to help clean off some of the dirt on you. He then leads you to another room to administer a series of questions: 'What's your name?' 'Where are you from?' 'What can you recall the last several days?' And other questions you are careful not to implicitly incriminate yourself with in answering. For now, regrettably, you're Colin Gates of Nevada.

Finally, you are shoved back into your cage, and you're left to wait and pray and listen in to visitors arguing with their imprisoned friends or relatives as your one form of entertainment. Evening rolls by, and meals are handed out. You don't mind the jail food too bad; Being this hungry, you eat every crumb graciously. It's by night you assume they had forgotten about you. There is a free bed among the five lined up on the far side of the cell, and you take this to your full advantage and plop your body on it to get some sleep. It's rough-going, as it's way too cold and you shiver uselessly, until one of the night shift desk officers takes pity on you and gives you a sheet to curl up in. Turns out, though, the shivering and trembling is one of growing dread. It feels like your fate is sealed. You're doomed. Finished. 

Maybe if you harp loud and often enough about wanting to reunite with one Mabel Pines, it'd gain the interest of some journalist, who might print that story, and might run down the grapevine to her, and she'll run to you and be amazed and overjoyed and disgusted all at once. The two of you would meet up after ten years of separation, yet all she would see would be a complete wreck of a brother who had turned from one addiction to another. Or worse, a stranger claiming creepy things like the madman he is. She would abandon you no matter how desperately you beg for her to see you as Dipper. Her Dipper. Her darling, sweet, intelligent, troubled, repulsive, idiot fuck-up brother.

The night is spent with these poisonous thoughts swirling around your head and in your paltry dreams, and the next morning you wake up to a woman calling you by the name you gave them.

"Colin Gates? Hey, is there a Colin Gates in here?"

The name is like nails to a chalkboard, but you suppose that you're thankful for that kind of wake-up call in this situation. You reluctantly sit up and wave a hand to the officer.

"R-right here, ma'am."

This is it, you catastrophize. The last day as a free man. The last day of your life.

You swallow and step forward. Time to get this over with.


	14. Deserved

When she walks up to the cell you notice that this woman is the same officer that helped to bring you in yesterday. You stand up with your hands clasped together while she unlocks your cell and coaxes you outside to the mocking jeer of an embittered woman that had been put in the cell sometime during the night. The officer leads you to the same room where you were questioned, and you are told to sit down once more.

You assume this is it; This is the meeting where your test results come back positive and the end of any chance for a decent life smashes your spirit down to dust. It's difficult not to tremble, so you focus on the nameplate on this desk. When she sits down with some papers you note the name-tag on her matches the plate; So her name happens to be Ruth Andrews.

You know you're going to forget, but if any tiny distraction keeps you from having a nervous meltdown you're going to let yourself be distracted. Ruth looks at you with kind eyes that you are paranoid to put trust in.

"Doing better this morning?" She asks.

"Uhh..." You blink a tad. "Yeah. Feeling better. Mostly."

"You look worried."

"I know why I'm here in this room. I just... can't believe myself. Of course I'd end up here. I'm surprised it didn't happen sooner, but... I guess it's time."

Officer Andrews nods, but seemingly ignores most of what you've said. "You've come a long way too, looks like. Nevada, huh?"

"Yeah. It kinda sucks there." This attempt to lighten the mood is one futile endeavor on your end. "Wouldn't recommend it."

"Heh, yeah. Don't get why some people prefer to live out in the desert." Andrews shuffles through your papers, then stops as she reads through its data.

Here it comes. You shrink down.

"Hm! Looks like your test came back negative."

Your eyes widen in complete surprise. Negative? How? Is your current drug of choice really _that_ new?

"Uh, huh." You swear you're going to melt in your seat from the panic and sweat and the stuttering smile you try to stabilize. "Well, that's great!"

"Really is," Andrews looks up at you, and you realize this isn't the end of it. "Though I still highly suspect you took something. Just not PCP like we thought."

Your heart stops. She knows you were high, though was way too late in detecting your last dabble in that stuff. Five or eight years, about? All you know now is that you were scared straight.

You're getting sidetracked. Try to focus. Andrews is explaining something important to you. Tune back in, dammit.

"...So right now we can't criminalize you for using Neon, if you indeed were intoxicated at the time, but it's something we're hoping to make illegal soon." She shuffles a paper out of the bunch and shows it to you. My God, she's right on the nose; One form of the pill in the collage is exactly like yours. "Trying to get this stuff off the streets, but it just keeps on coming, and it's really becoming a public danger. People really love taking a bunch of these. End up dying either from accidents or overdoses."

"Really?"

This simple question is met with a nod. "Found a guy dead in his apartment the other day with the stuff."

Your blood runs as cold as ice water. "Oh God. Wh-what was his name?"

Hopefully, that quivering in your voice wasn't a detectable tell. When she pulls out a news clipping out of the bunch and hands it to you, the scare passes, and your windpipes relax. It wasn't Perry. Still, you're nervous.

"Anyone else die?"

"Couple needed to be sent to the hospital just yesterday. Heard one of them was living in filth and had a massive amount in his system. Surprised he's still kicking."

That sounded too much like Perry, and the guilt you've harbored ever since John and his crimes yanks at your psyche, desiring nothing more than to pull you under here and now. You need to expend a great amount of energy to stay afloat, and you hope the next question is answered just as calmly. "You said I wouldn't be criminalized? So I could say and not get in trouble for it?"

"More or less." Her gesture has an air of exasperation. "Have you?"

Your eyes can't help but dart about anxiously, but you steel your nerves with a cleansing breath of air. Maybe with this one confession, you can ease the crushing pressure of John's sins by a hair.

"Y-Yes, ma'am."

"I see." Andrews leans in. "How much do you have? That is, if you have any."

"Well, see, I got a pretty large bag. So, umm," You exhale. "Hard to say. Not on me, you know, but I got about some of what I originally had."

She eyes you suspiciously. "You're not dealing are you?"

"What?" Your voice cracks. "No! N-no, it's nothing like that! It's like... it's more like..." You lean into the desk with hands groping your face. It was like that, recently, in basically the same circumstances, but you don't want to focus on that. "...I really love taking a bunch of them. Bunch of other stuff too, and alcohol. Tons of it if I'm cornered... I don't... I don't lead a very good life."

"Certainly doesn't sound like you do." Andrews agrees. "Paul mentioned you were sleeping out on the streets. Guessing you aren't visiting some friends out here in New York, huh?"

"No, ma'am." You feel this is immediately going to bite you in the ass, but you need that further distraction away from goddamn John! "I'm looking for family, though. Thinking reuniting with my sister will help get things back together. And, well, please don't think I'm crazy, but I'm her brother."

Her eyebrows quirk. "Whose?"

"Mabel. Mabel Pines's."

The officer becomes intrigued. "Huh. _Hers_ , you say?"

"You know her?" You can't believe what she is saying. This officer _knows_ your sister?!

"Met her on a call not too long ago. Paul told me she's a real good artist, so I did some research on her and found that little nugget out."

"Really? Wait, on a c..." No, you shake your head. Focus on the more important part. "You met her?!"

You want to be realistic to yourself, but you seriously hope this is a one-way ticket to Mabel.

"Yeah. However, I don't feel alright disclosing her location with you."

Well, all your hopes have been dashed. It's like a balloon has popped, and your spirits are crashing as fast as they'd soared mere seconds ago. "W-why not?"

"For one, for her safety. And two, you claimed earlier that your name is Colin Gates. By my research, she's looking for Dipper Pines."

Again, you shrink back down in your seat. You don't know if this entire ordeal has clued this perceptive cop to the fact you have multiple fake IDs, but you're pretty certain having said IDs warrants some sort of offense.

"Your name isn't Colin Gates, is it?"

You were expecting this inevitable question to be asked in pure hate. Instead, it's asked sweetly, as though a mother asking a child. You smartly keep your lips sealed, afraid. She realizes you're scared, and coaxes you.

"It'll be okay by me if it's not."

"But... excuse my bluntness, but wouldn't that be an offense? I mean, you're an officer. It's your job to--"

She interrupts with a sly tweak of expression. "It'll be our secret."

"Well... in that case..." You gather another breath. "N-no. I'm not Colin."

Neither a SWAT team nor a squad of officers bust in through the door, but you swear that there has to be a wire in this room somewhere recording all of this idiocy you're exhibiting. You are essentially confessing, aren't you? God, you're so dumb. Andrews is silent for a very long time; You know she is thinking long and hard about all the information she has collected on you and balancing that with her personal morals and her training.

"We ran that name through a database." She thinks aloud. "Turns out he's been missing for about two weeks. Did further research on that, kinda a research nut, and it turns out you look awfully similar to one or two other men reported missing the last couple of years."

"Y-Yes! Okay! I admit it!" Panic ruptures out of your mouth. "I'm probably all of them! I've been running about for years just trying to survive a=and get some footing but it always ends poorly and I need to vanish!" Your brain hurts and zings and feels ill. "Fuck it, I've done terrible things to get by, and I'm so very sorry for doing all of that! It was all about personal survival, but I should have thought it all through a little better before I went and dragged people down with me like that! I'm sorry! I really am!"

You swallow down a forming lump and attempt to tune out your surroundings into a dream-like state to quell the tremors emanating from deep in your guts to your extremities. You didn't just confess to more legally punishable sins, have you? You did. Goddammit. God DAMN you. You're nothing more than a moron at this juncture. A slimy junkie of a moron.

"Sir?" Andrews reaches over to place a calm hand over your sweating palm. "Sir, it's okay. This is gonna be our secret, okay?"

You don't understand. "But I'm confessing!"

Andrews shooshes you. "Quiet. Some of my buddies could hear. They may not be as... sympathetic, and I don't want anything bad happening to you. Sounds like you have a lot on your plate as it is."

You lick your lips but don't say anything; The chest pain has returned by now, which is like a cherry on top of this massive sundae of awful problems and life choices.

"Now listen. Look at me." You obey. "I'm not going to arrest you. I'm going to let you go free."

You're flummoxed at this officer, who has done nothing but show absolute kindness to you and taken every reason to keep you in jail only to blindly toss it away. "Why, though? I just confessed to being a... a bad person."

Ruth smirks. "Call me crazy, but you don't look like a bad guy at all. Unlucky and desperate, but not bad. I'd rather have worse people be put away."

Again, you can't understand. "Are you sure about that?"

"What? You got more stuff to confess to?"

"N-no, I don't. I think. My memory's too terrible nowadays."

She nods. "I see. And you only know the big stuff, is that right?"

"Yeah." You hope so.

"Didn't kill anybody?"

"No." You hope not.

"No bodily harm? Rape? Nothing like that?"

"No." You seriously hope not.

She shrugs dismissively. "Then I see no reason to keep you here."

Those words jolt you with just how sincerely honest they sound; It paradoxically calms your heart and dulls the pain its been causing.

"The exit is going to be directly to your left, then right when you reach the corner. But let me just tell you one thing before you go."

You cautiously stand up from your chair. "Yeah?"

"Take care of yourself, alright, sir?" Ruth's germaine smile is like a gift. "Find help if you need it. There's no shame in doing so, and don't think that just because you've done bad things in the past it means you don't deserve it. You totally do."

You nod rapidly. "I-I will. Thank you so much, ma'am. I'm... I'm gonna try."

In about a minute you step out of the police station in a stunned half-catatonie. You are actually standing right here on the sidewalk as a free person. By some honest-to-God miracle, you are free! It's glorious _freedom_!

There is no time to celebrate as you quickly recall that your wallet is missing. You need to find it as soon as you can, and the one place you feel like it could possibly be is an unsure island of features disconnected from the mainland, but you're eager to try as your life depends on it.

There is some difficulty finding your way back to the park from this unfamiliar starting location, but a local is more than happy to give you directions. From there, however, it all becomes a guessing game as to whether you're in the right area of this excessive park space. All you know is that you climbed underneath some kind of bridge, not too incredibly far from the borders of this space, and loaded yourself full of Neons.

Eventually, you come to a certain portion of the park that feels familiar and recent. The little walking bridge rattles your soul enough where you need to be certain that this is the place you started tripping out. There's not a lot of hope that your wallet is here; In fact, you managed to keep your various wallets from being stolen for so long that this has to be the end of the line as far as luck is involved.

Swinging down under, you glance about this side of the bank, finding your bags and noting someone did take some clothing but not the computer nor the Neons, then the other, then this side again.

There it is. In a little alcove made out of a missing brick. Easily hidden from unwanted hands. You snatch it up and look inside to be certain. There's your pack of old IDs, your current one, your cash and, most importantly, the photo. You grin from ear to ear and hold the picture close to your chest.

This was the only thing you truly cared about losing. You can always get more money. You can find more clothes. You could always get another ID, you always could. This is irreplaceable.

"Mabel... oh God, Mabel, you're safe. Y-You're safe..."

Your smile falters and tears bubble down your face. You've been at this in this city for two weeks now. You're only marginally closer than when you first started. You've tracked her down to the right area, but misfortune after misfortune has prevented you from getting down to the nitty gritty. You've nearly died several times, for God's sake.

And, you have to admit to yourself, you're getting scared both of never meeting Mabel, and of the reunion. How could she ever still love someone like you? 

The picture is crushed into your dirty shirt.

"Mabel, please. I need you. Tell me where I need to go. Answer me, please." You sigh mightily. "Please still love me."


	15. Readjusting

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Expect updates to be a little more frequent for the next few chapters. Not sure if this is more due to the fact that pretty much everything is written at this point and all that needs to be done is editing, or because I want you guys reading to have feels sooner. Likely, it's both.

You get ahold of yourself quickly, your body growing faint from deep hunger and aching for sustenance. While you absolutely despise how you got the money, you first make a stop to a fast food place to get some breakfast, then make a stop to a grocery store to stock up on a bag of cereal and some granola bars to munch on as an emergency reserve, then finally plop yourself, coffee in hand, at a cafe table.

You hate to admit it, but this dirty money is necessary to your very survival. At least, for a few days, you can live a little more comfortably, and though despite what he had almost done to you, you hope that man you unwillingly sold those drugs to is alright, maybe. You can't remember his name now, even though you did earlier today, but you recall the squalor he was living in.

Actually, you aren't sure what to feel about that guy. If anything, he did give you a few more days, and perhaps, against everything you're feeling, it should be left at that.

You hate leaving it at that.

You bring out your laptop, and get down to business once more. Of course, you can only wholly get a physical hold of yourself; You can't conjure up the mental fortitude to encourage some resolve in your search as the events of the past week of misfortune mill about in your head and nibble at the tough, juicy gray matter within.

Getting blackout drunk and losing your stuff was a bother. Hurting your ankle and wasting time having it heal drove you up the wall. Almost being a victim of rape and unwillingly dealing drugs as a kind of ransom was too much to bear. Getting high and waking up getting arrested and spending time in jail was about to kill you had some other being not lifted you out of that mess. And then there's the worrying surge in flashback experiences that only your lone frazzled, fraying psyche can merely attempt to try to talk yourself down from, only to fail time and time again with.

The blood was too much, and you take off your cap momentarily to hold it close to your chest and quietly, softly, subtly rock yourself in the chair until that horrifying, so intensely-white-it's-blue ember dissipates, and you can pull the cap snugly back on your head.

It's been a bad week and you'd be lying to yourself if you thought it hasn't been wearing on you. It makes you wonder just what happened from a mental perspective that turned that brave, rational, intelligent boy you once were to the dumb and impulsive coward today. Hell, the vaguely rational and sharp young man from several years ago to the rusted out hull of today.

Ruth's truncated advice rings between your ears as your negative thoughts swirl and nip at your ankles: Get help, there's no shame, you still deserve it despite your past. You wonder the logistics of seeking out help for your broken brain, whether settled back into your old life with Mabel or struggling in some corner of this expansive country. No doubt, it'd be easier with Mabel by your side. Though, with how your past is such a massive tangle of regret and wounds and innumerable blanks, "easier" would be a relative term.

It's obvious to you that you'll never entirely get over it. Ten years of a life poorly lived, of time poorly spent, can't be erased even with the toughest eraser tearing the paper to shreds trying to remove the marks. The pulverized paper would still have those pitch India ink marks until the end of your time.

"What the hell?"

You were on total autopilot making your way from powering on your decrepit laptop to opening up your e-mail client. You click on the refresh button again and again and again until you can't refute the truth that you haven't gotten any e-mails at all. Or rather, nothing that was solicited. Maybe you had imagined sending the e-mail, and you check, but you really did send it out.

Mabel hasn't responded.

Your mind goes off in a flurry of pensiveness. Did she lose interest in finding you? Would Mabel tire of you if and when you return to her? You're Dipper, but not the same Dipper that grew up with her. You're different now. Broken. Would she be disappointed in who you've become? Would she grow to hate you? Does she already hate you?

You shake your head. No, you can't let yourself keep going down that road. It's for your own sake. Healing is going to be difficult even with Mabel in your corner. Alone, it'd be Sisyphean.

So, you drag yourself up with all your might, copy the message you had sent and resend it in another e-mail, changing the subject slightly to 'It's Me, Dipper', to make sure it'll grab your sister's attention this time around. Maybe you need to be clear upfront. Maybe your sister gets a ton of e-mails and yours slipped through the cracks thanks to your terrible subject line.

It's an aggressive measure but, as Ruth pointed out, there's no shame in asking for the help you deserve despite the mistakes you've made, and you hope that love will help. You deserve love, and it's nice to know that someone's on your side in that declaration.

\---

_"I think I'm ready, John."_

_You are shocked out of the serene, cuddling embrace you're engaging in with your girlfriend of five months, and roommate of two. You had been massaging a free hand on her thick shoulder, with the other curled around hers, and doing what you affectionately called that "foot crap", circling toes around toes._

_You fell in love the moment you met her and supposedly vice-versa, and throughout the months the two of you had slowly been trusting each other more and more, working your way up to tranquil, nude bodies savoring this certain kind of relaxed environment with one another. Honestly, you're not ready. You expected several more weeks before you'd hear permission, but your lack of readiness is more from surprise than planning._

_"You sure, hun?" It also surprises you that you'd call anyone 'hun', but love is weird, as you've found out._

_"Absolutely."_

_A warm tongue licks a spot between your shoulder and neck, and that subsequent nibble says to you all it needs to say; John Hatcher is going to be your best persona yet. The one you'll settle down with. The person you'll die as. And as the night wears on, you're certain that death will be one from a life made happy._

_About less than half a year later, you just barely dodge a paperback novel expertly thrown, spine first, towards your head. She had found your old ID cards while you were returning from work, and she doesn't wait for you to blink, and she doesn't miss in giving you a good socking across the lip._

_"Get the fuck out of my life! I thought I could trust someone again!"_

_She was in the right. Her life was awful and full of deceit, and only with you was she starting to heal from those wounds.Your past identities, you learned, had come back to haunt you in the worst way possible. The very existence of Matthew, Dennis and several other men shattered every ounce of belief she had in you._

_Since that day you were tossed out you grew to learn, as your luck dissipated and the world turned ugly, how distance should be your policy, and caution your code of conduct. A life like yours should be led alone and detached._

_A fit of drunk turmoil on-the-job for having lost your closest chance at love, hefted onto a restaurant patron, leads to your firing about a week later. You were too miserable to look for another, so in two months time, you were evicted._

_Two or three months later, that stranger spits at you and tells you to fucking die, and you're run out of the one home you had left, and into the frigid blizzards of that winter._

_It's so cold._

\---

You are awoken by a downpour penetrating your clothes and chilling you to the bone, and while you know full well you should find shelter whether you like it or not, there is an odd sensation of concern with that idea. Several lazy rolls of thunder rumble out in the distance, and seconds after a blast of wind that is strong enough to knock over an empty garbage can alerts you to stop minding your past and to, at the very least, get inside any open building and hunker down for the duration.

You and your things are soaked. The howling wind pretty much chooses the direction you run, and you run with very little control of yourself. It leads you out to the middle of an intersection where a car nearly runs you over again, then it shifts and you are sent barreling backwards with rain in your eyes. Turning left so you're only being pushed against buildings, you soon give up in your trek for an actual shelter and charge into a hotel, collapsing on your knees when the elements leave you all at once.

The lights in this fancy place are flickering, and the night staff look at you with raised eyebrows, but at least they appear willing to let you stay in the lobby as long as the storm rages on. They seem less keen on you sitting down in an armchair and taking stock on your drenched belongings, but again, for now, they leave you to your devices.

You're worried most about your laptop, yet it appears to be fine when you turn it on and run several basic tests to see if everything still works. It's damp, but hanging in there. None of your clothes are dry, however, and you bitterly swear. You'll need to waste money drying it all off at a laundromat. Again, you swear, this time at yourself, for your sudden, severe skittishness from going to a shelter for the night.

You sneak off to the hotel lobby's bathroom to check yourself in the mirror. You discover that your hair is more windswept than wet, which is astounding because you are drenched to the bone. There are several power blowers to your left, and you take full advantage of this; After you had dried off your head, hands and arms, you take off your shirt, shoes and socks and run all three in these makeshift dryers.

You suppose your shirt can be half dry, and your chest wet, as these hand dryers are starting to make a funny sound, and there's no way you can afford to replace these if the hotel commands you to. At least the way they are now, if they stay that way, is enough plausible deniability for your responsibility on their states. Also, you doubt anything good would happen if you attempt to dry your boxers, especially if someone were to come in. Hopefully, though, you've done enough to stave off sickness. The flu is the last thing you need now.

You return to your armchair and the things you irresponsibly left here. It's not two minutes relaxing in the most comfortable chair you've sat in for weeks before hotel staff confronts you and politely asks you to leave in a manner that sounds more like a commanding threat. Outside, it is still very stormy, and you grimace apologetically to them.

"You sure you seriously want me to go back out there?"

"You're ruining the furniture." Says one member of the staff.

"I dried myself off. Mostly. And it's just furniture!"

The same worker glowers at you. "Sir, I've been asked to tell you to leave."

"Into that weather? Are you insane?! Can't I at least stand in here until it stops? I swear, I'll be gone the second the rain stops!"

The other member of the hotel staff exhales through their flared nostrils. "Do I have to call security?"

Shit. This bastard has twisted your arms behind your back and all you can do is to cave to these demands. You were lucky the last time you confronted the police, and there's no way you can strike gold twice. Still, you're enraged these people have the gall to throw you out in the middle of a storm, and you speak up in the same instant a nearby lightning strike dims the lights to nothing for a second.

"Fine," You mumble. "Fine... alright... Guessing European furniture's more important than human decency. Whoever runs this place can just suck it!"

You bulk yourself up with your soggy bags and march out the door and back into the elements. It is all of two seconds that pass before you are not only drenched once more, but you are hit by a wet wad of newspaper. Murphy's Law

You are the only angry soul out in this weather at this time of night, and you barely are fazed by the loud thunder and bright flashes of lightning. The center of the storm has gotten so much closer, and an errant, spiteful thought considers that you get electrocuted for the hell of it.

But then again, no. You can't do that. Amidst the howling winds, the sheets of rain, the cracking of thunder, your mind reminds you of Mabel. Long ago, you'd comfort her from these kinds of late-night thunderstorms. You'd explain how everything would be fine, and how thunderstorms worked. You promised her nothing bad would ever happen from those storms, oftentimes convincing her only when you climbed into bed with her to assure her of the fact that she was perfectly safe.

And now, you can't go back on that promise simply to spite a couple of assholes. You need to get through this for her.

Ten minutes later, you're dripping wet, but inside an all-night diner. You're able to trick yourself that it is money well spent when you buy a meal and take three hours consuming it. The night manager is nice to your face, but behind the kitchen doors you eventually see him shake his head through the portal window. When he does this you decide it's probably the best time to pay and leave. The rain had stopped long ago, and the sun is just about to rise.

You're hard-pressed to find a laundromat you can afford in the morning, but by some chance you find one. The place is just as humid as it is outside, and you have to ask around to break your change up but, albeit with less money than what you like, your clothes are dry.

Today, you go forth on another attempt to ask around, and you get nothing. After you eat some handfuls of cereal for lunch, you grab a small coffee and continue forth on another expedition into Mabel's online life for new information.

Again and again and again, you check your e-mail and receive no replies. Again, your evening is filled with more asking complete strangers of Mabel's whereabouts and not getting a single good answer. Again, your heart aches and your brain hurts.

You decide on turning in early and sleeping in another alley tonight, and again it feels like another day has gone up in smoke. All you hope is to get a good night's sleep.


	16. Concussed

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh man, don't know if I want to spit out any spoilers, but maybe I should. Mabel will finally show up in the next several chapters. And things will be sad so protect your feels.
> 
> And finally, happy 25th to me. *toot*

"Dude. Dude, shh! Don't wake him!" A slithering whisper.

"I'm trying, alright?! Keep it down!" A venomous hiss.

You think you're still dreaming when you feel something being pulled out of your pocket. You still wholly believe that you had been walking on an endless street when a wisp of a burly arm hoisted you upward, through the stars, past the Big Dipper itself, to a consul of souls whose faces you were unable to hash the details out of.

You drifted through this throng, their pointless burblings meaning nothing to you at first. As you ghosted your way towards a lone man, you began to make out what he was saying.

"Find her and you'll find her. And you'll find her. Find her... And you'll find her?"

You were unable to move, and so you couldn't change your course to shake this man and demand that he stop speaking in riddles. You tried to speak, but only shouted. The man floated farther and farther off, and then you can only hear the din of nonsense from this crowd.

Then, you approached another man, who had his back turned to you. As you inched closer, you thought you heard him saying something much of the same as the previous man, but suddenly, he turned to you. His head was that of a snake, and you felt something from your pants pocket be pulled out as he spoke.

The people behind you vanish and your world becomes silent until this creature speaks again.

"Dude's got like sixty bucks, man!" The snake speaks in a deep baritone, and immediately its pitch changes on a dime to a lighter, whispery feminine tone. "Oh shit, check this out!"

A snoring sound rumbles from your throat. A spit bubble has enclosed your throat, and you rapidly shoot your eyes open and gasp out for air.

It's here you see two people, a couple maybe, barely out of their teenage years. One of them is crouched over your duffel bag, several pieces of clothes draped over her shoulder, and holding a map or pamphlet of some kind and a plastic bag. The other, standing over you, is holding a wallet in one hand, cash and some ratty picture in the other.

You wake up completely on the realization that you're being robbed.

"Hey, what're you doing?!"

Your shout and clumsy offensive scramble onto your two feet startles the thieves, and the one with your wallet steps backwards, towards the wall of this dead-end alley. Thank God, by where you had placed your bags before turning in, it has placed you between two criminals and their freedom. You feel like you have the upper hand in this.

"Give me back my wallet." It's dropped and kicked towards you without a thought, and you step over to pick it up. You go through it and see you've only ten dollars left. "Okay, now, give me back my money and I won't say a word to the cops. Doesn't have to be more than that. Just... everything in your hands, man? Give it back, and I'll say nothing."

The male thief nods to his accomplice, and she stands up and backs away into the shadows with the items she had gathered. His composure and certainty have been stabilized, and he doesn't give you back the fifty dollars, nor that strange piece of paper. You think hard, half-asleep and not remembering what that could be. It feels important, and you're frustrated in yourself that your frazzled, damaged mind is blanking out.

"What's that other thing you've got?"

The silhouetted thief looks at it, flashing the back to you, although it's too dark to see what's written on the back. "Just some dumbass, sappy photo. Why? You want this shit back?"

"Photo?"

"Yeah. One of the kids looks like you, sorta."

You're clawing to remember just why the hell you have a photo like that on you, or why there's a resemblance between a kid on it and you. Dammit, why now?

"What's it say on the back?"

He flips it over and decides to be a comedian. "Oh man, some signature or something. I dunno."

"No seriously, what does it say?" Urgency creeps into your voice. "Please. It's... oh my God," You're remembering, and you're becoming gravely alarmed. "Give that back now!"

The man scans the photo, glances up at you, and chuckles. "Sixty bucks."

"What?!"

"You heard me," This jerk, this asshole, is toying with you. "I mean, I already got fifty, soo..."

"Not gonna happen." You square your shoulders back and pull a fist. "I won't go broke just to buy back my sister's picture."

"Oh, really now? Your sister? The hell do you do with this, you sicko?"

"Oh my God, don't!" You're snarling, knowing you're failing at keeping your emotions in check against nothing more than punk kids, but you're disgusted. "The fuck is your...? No!"

The younger man appears pleased in himself for your reaction, but isn't done with you. He holds the photo with two hands, and starts to tear with his right thumb and index finger, voice keening with high-pitched giggling as he does. 

"Hey, KNOCK IT _OFF_!"

You lunge forward like lightening to strike with a ferocious right hook, but out of the shadows, the woman thief clobbers you with a blow of her own, just above the temple, with a fairly blunt object. You don't realize it when it happens.

Physically, you're out very briefly, coming to with no issue, but you're completely blacked-out mentally. You don't move so much as you lie there, stunned and staring dumbfoundedly at the urban night sky above, until you slide so insidiously into a dream that, again, you don't realize at all that it is happening. You don't realize a single thing.

\---

_Sweat throbs out of your wretched body like pulsating geysers.You've never held an actual license, but here you are, behind the wheel outside of some bar in Weiser, Idaho in the crisp fall night with the windows closed and heat on at full blast, waiting for your acquaintences to finish a job, so you can start yours as their getaway driver._

_Admittedly, it's great driving practice._

_You don't know if the sweat is from nerves; You've done this dozens of times before, merely an accessory to whatever crimes your notsomuch housemates commit, and nothing more._

_Maybe the sweat is from the coke snorted just before this latest run. The confidence boost is necessary to complete this task, otherwise you're too sick to your stomach in guilt and withdrawal pangs. Your reward for doing your job is a bed to sleep on in the uninsulated shack behind these peoples' modest house, and more coke._

_It's a vicious cycle. You're so very tired of vicious cycles._

_You think you can do it. Beyond the river is Oregon. All it would take is to slowly trudge this vehicle into the street, then to floor it as long as possible. Until you run out of gas and can only run westward on your feet. Gravity Falls may not be "home", but you have family there! Friends! You will be safe there!_

_A rich, rapid heartbeat booms in your ears. You could do it! You could run away from this life right here, right now, and be with your Grunkles, you hope, if they haven't died from old age, by morning! The steering wheel is wringed hard, and you can't stop biting your lip in anticipation. It'd be so easy! You're so very tired._

_What stops you is the ghost of your handlers. These people are more than happy to feed your current addiction provided you do whatever they ask. Happy to be your friends, until things go south. You heard their stories on how they had ditched past helpers and saw them on the news the next day. Accused of crimes they technically did commit by way of accessory, these past helpers eventually got ten, twenty, thirty years of prison time while your bosses got off scot-free._

_You've seen them beat others like you for petty things, thus you strive to please them. It was hard because, as they came to know of your accelerated cognition, they put you in charge of formulating plans and backup plans, and you knew that any small mistake or hitch that caused unplanned losses meant beatings and witholdings of that precious coke. It happened once before. So it's not that far of a stretch to assume that grand theft auto would put you on their kill list for sure._

_Even if they don't kill you, the car would be reported stolen, and you will be hunted down and arrested so very quickly. Maybe not quickly, but the cops will ultimately find you._

_But you can do it! You want to do it! You need to! You rev the engine! You put the car into drive!_

_...You can't do it.You're coming down already, it seems._

_Cocaine sure is one hell of a drug._

\---

When you come to, it's just past daybreak. You can only initially hear buzzing in your ears, but sluggishly, it clears up, and you are able to pick up the din of the city's rousing pulse. When you open your eyes, your torn picture sits in front of you, alongside your wallet, somehow standing upright on the pavement and pinning the former down. Honestly, you're baffled. How did those things get out of your pocket?

Once the world stops spinning, you grab the photo and wallet, and sit up. Just where the hell are you? You're aware enough that your memory is having a severe lapse on account of something, but you can't remember anything other than your dream. Was it a dream? Thinking is hard, and you have to conclude that your current persona is Peter.

The attack is coming back to you, in fragmentations. There was a guy and a woman. They came from the shadows like snakes. They took your clothes, money, and some other things, then knocked you senseless.

Wait... are you homeless now? It's very hard to think. Why is this city so loud? Idaho doesn't have big cities, unless you count Boise, maybe. This is more like Dallas, or Los Angeles, or Oakland, or New York.

"...Ohhhh." The past few years, up to the present, are coming back to you. You _think_ you know what you're doing here. "I'm here," You go over. "...in New York, because I... I want to... want to go home. I... that makes no sense."

It's very, very hard to think with this headache. You touch the forming bruise on your head. It stings, and you feel dizzy and nauseated, but that's barely of note to you. You're too confused at your current living situation to be concerned with anything else. 

"I want to... I want... why am I here? I'm... oh God, my head... I'm... Peter, not. Not Peter. No. Who am I now? I'm... Dipper Pines. That I know, but..." You get an idea. "My wallet. Yeah. Wallet. Remember, Dip? Looking there always helps when stuff like this happens."

A woman who had slowed down to gawk at your crumpled form mumble incoherencies backs away slowly when you notice her, in a manner suggesting her conviction that you have a severe mental illness. Schizophrenia, perhaps? Maybe drunk? You are kinda slurring your words a little. You feel drunk. You pull the wallet back out from your pocket and look inside.

"Okay, right. I'm Colin Gates now. Ugh," Your skin crawls. "The second I find Mabel I'm done with this name sh-no wait, Mabel! She... sh-she lives here! That's why I'm here! I'm trying to go home to Mabel!"

The yelling knocks around your injured skull, forcing you to draw backwards and rub the bruise again. The wave of dizziness leads you to lie back down, until you're well-assured you're not going to have an episode of concussed vomiting, then you sit up again.

The entire expedition to this city to find Mabel has been returned to your memory, up to and including the attack. You freeze, remember what the thief did to your photo, and rush to pull it out of your wallet's otherwise empty billfold for a frenzied inspection.

The damage done to the photo disturbs you. It was torn about a third of the way down, right through the middle. You don't want to sob, but you shakily hold the photo in your hand, nervously catastropizing over how you're going to fix this.

You're starting to cry. You can't fix this. You feel dumb for crying over something so simple, but this photo means the world to you. This is such awful damage to your most beloved possession, and it'll be so easy to complete the tear now it's there. You haven't taken the best care for the photo, but at least you refused to let it tear this badly, let alone in such a major spot. It's going to break in two.

For a while, you sob because you don't have the money for tape. _You really want tape._

Soon, you put the photo carefully back into your wallet, and wipe away the snot. You have to pull yourself together and start your day. You need to. You can't just sit here and cry. Maybe Mabel responded to you, so you could be meeting her as early as later today. The thought puts fire into your heart's hearth, and you smile. Once you reunite with Mabel you can have all the tape you want to fix the photo. It'll be alright then.

You take stock of your belongings as a way to further reorient yourself, and you become flummoxed that more of your precious clothing has been pilfered away. Just what do people want with your dirty clothes, anyway? That guy you met about a week or so ago had rejected them because he feared they'd be covered in shit.

At least your backpack appears untouched, and thus your laptop safe, unlike your duffel bag. Your duffel bag has been ransacked, and as you search deeper, you feel an odd franticness that feels like it can only be quelled by emptying out everything, even the backpack, and going through it all, one by one, popping an aspirin when you come across that bottle, until you've wholly repacked and figured out what they've taken from you.

They took the Neons.

It's liberating, yet terrifying. You're panicking, but in those same shallow breaths expressing gratefulness for being relieved of that burden.

Those recent exploits have turned you off from that drug, but you're trembling fearfully that, eventually, your stressors are going to drive you to craving its relief and synthetic happiness sooner than what you would ever like.

And once that thought crosses your mind, it's difficult not to want to indulge in anything to distract away from your problems. You kind of miss the old days where that was perfectly okay. Now, all attempts at escapism bring too much shameful baggage for the action to be worth it, no matter what it is, and whether or not you go through with it.

Since there's not much else to do, unless you want to be quick and sneaky - and you don't, it sickens you now when you do, and regardless you feel too lethargic to be up to it anyway - you shrug, gather your physical baggage, now lighter on your frame, and you stand up.

The wobbly soldiering you put forth is for the strict purposes of reuniting yourself with Mabel, and for repairing your decrepit picture. It's hard to think. You don't know which is more important to you right now.

Yep, you're definitely concussed.


	17. Jade

Walking through the streets since dawn, you've grown to drowsily note that today's going to be another hot day. A very muggy, very hot day.

Actually, you needed to duck into an alley at around 9 in the morning. The heat had sucked so much energy from your body that it was starting to affect your heart. It's beating hard and irregularly, trying its hardest to effectively pump blood but you have an inkling it is being ralphed the wrong way just before you were able to sit down in the shade. What you do know is it hasn't been helping your striking headache in the slightest, either.

You are able to crack open your unstolen laptop and leech off some free Internet from the shop your back is nestled on to see what was going on, and apparently this scorcher was already slated to be a record-breaking day. Worry lines form on your moistened brow when you see that estimated temperature, coupled with the supposed heat index; There's simply no way you'll be able to survive out here. If you try, you know you're going to end up in a hospital. Concussed or not, you know better than to risk it.

"Shit. If I only had, like, ten bucks or something," You scoff in the middle of your clearly stated thought, mentally cursing the bastards that had the gall to pickpocket you, some homeless nobody. "...certainly would've solved my food problem too...wait... I have ten dollars, right?" You check. "No... jerks must've took it when I was out... damn..."

Thinking is hard to do as it is with your damaged brain, harder with the vampiric heat drinking away your energy, and impossible with the head injury. You haven't been in this part of town before, so it could be minutes or hours of blind searching before you could chance at crossing a library branch or a church, and with the temperature only getting worse you can't afford walking around for hours. Hell, you sluggishly suppose, without the heat you could still have an incident: heart, head, ankle, or otherwise. The closer and sooner you can find a place to hide out in for the day to rest, the better.

So you make an Internet search for cooling stations. Thanks to the connection the search is able to locate your position and give you the perfect result of places in this specific area you can go. You study the directions to death and it is not twenty minutes later that you are stumbling, panting and tired and completely mentally exhausted, up a short series of stairs and into a church. Oddly, you were searching for a community center, but a sign on the door says 'Emergency Cooling Center - All Are Welcome', so you take it anyway.

Immediately, cool air blows through your greasy hair and across your skin. As old as this place appeared on the outside, with its cracked limestone and vine tendrils crawling up the dizzying stone facade, it has A/C.

Truth be told, you are a little too chilled by this much-needed and refreshing air, but you prefer to be shivering than to be sweating. It's easier on your body, and all you have to do to solve your problem is to dig into your bag and pull out that oversized hoodie before the various signs in the main chapel lead you to a hall.

The air conditioning is even more powerful in here, and you zip up your hoodie to combat the freezing cold. You're none too thrilled having to share cramped quarters with dozens of perfect strangers needing sanctuary from the smothering heat, licking its way in but never quite permeating too far from the doors of the church, but you can't complain otherwise.

You're grateful for the air conditioning in this possibly historic building, thankful that the tendrils of hell can't reach you here, at least not physically. What you can complain about is the maddening lack of a good Internet connection, so your research and checking in on your e-mail has to be put on hold.

"Dammit! Is it too hard to ask for some Internet so I can find my sister already and be done with this nightmare?!"

Everyone hears your noisy, perturbed, aching growling when you find that hard truth out, but you know you're right. It's been weeks and all you have to show for it has been nothing but turmoil and injuries. You want some results, already! You're trying to do anything to aid your search despite common knowledge imploring that you need to rest from the concussion. What if Mabel responded? You have to tell her where you are, and it certainly doesn't help that your client keeps timing out on you!

The lid to your laptop is violently slammed shut, and the snarl plastered on your pained face slowly devolves as the headache forces you to let go in favor of recovery. You just clear-headed enough to be aware that you're confused, agitated and in pain. For a while, you curl up against the wall with a dirty shirt shielding your eyes from the light. It seems to help the headache. It's soothing, and you listlessly skirt the border between wakefulness and sleep, until oddly twitchy limbs, likely emanating from the stray electrical energy bleeding through your latest wound, compel you to wake up.

You _hope_ that wasn't a seizure. It didn't feel quite like one, and you guess that if it were you'd be in much worse shape than you are, but you've had enough of those for a lifetime. You don't want to deal with any more of them.

It's kind of humorous that you find yourself in here, in the church, a cool oasis in a sea of shimmering heat. At least, you appreciate the metaphor. You wonder if you should embrace it fully and go off the beg for some sort of clemency to whatever higher being that could be listening, though that contrived imagery tastes bitter in your mind, and you swear you won't stoop down to something so mindless and unnecessarily time consuming, if only briefly.

It is about ten or twenty minutes later your bored, tired, smelly body shuffles its way into the main chamber.

Goddammit, you suppose. God damn _you_.

You peek inside the confessional, both sides, to make absolutely sure that you are alone. For what reason, you can't really tell, you simply don't like the idea of some third party listening and chiming in with their opinions and interpretations and questions. If you're going to indulge in this, you want this to simply be between the two of you. No one else.

Strictly speaking, you're embarrassed.

You sheepishly enter into your side of the confessional and sit onto the antique bench that really should've been replaced twenty years ago. There is a slight vertigo you're beginning to suffer from, as despite being firmly parked, your world feels like it's drifting leftward, in the direction you suffered that blow.

You shut the door to this tiny chamber in which transgressions are supposed to be spoken to some guy, usually, and by some magic are cleansed from your soul, supposedly, and you speak.

"First off, thanks for not having me get thrown in prison. I, um... appreciate that you've heard all those, um... fervent prayers. ...God, this feels so... _contrived_." You confess. "What next? Do I beg for forgiveness from all the dirty things I've done all these years?" You scratch behind your ear. "Would it even count if I'm not necessarily one of yours?"

You think for a second, then relax.

"I guess Abrahamic is Abrahamic, after all. No use in arguing that, just because I'm technically... Uh... Does it count if we ever really practiced...?" You feel a little sick, and decide against any more philosophizing for the time being. "Anyway... I guess you've seen me go around making everything worse for myself this past decade. And you've seen how, somehow, I never seem to learn my lesson. Just... Got a problem? Turn tail and run away! It's gonna work this time, trust me! What, it didn't work? You got another problem you can't face? Pssh! This time, trust me! For real this time!"

Was that your voice that leaked through into the massive chamber outside? You stop in your diatribe to listen, but all you hear is some hollow, lonely echo. It's very, very disheartening, and your heart agrees with several wrenching clicks. Maybe you are insane, sitting in this booth rambling on to yourself, but you need to let something out, now that you're in the spirit of the ritual.

"I... I need direction. Or I guess, _a_ direction. I'm... lost? I know where I am, and where I should hypothetically be going, but I don't know anything else than that. It's... it's hard trying to find my family out here! I know they're here, in this area, but I just can't find her! And, I kinda do need to find her soon. I don't know if I can last too long like this." You rub the bruise now clearly marked on your temple. "I need to be somewhere safe so I can rebuild myself, one last time. I'm not healthy out here alone like this. I need my sister to lean on and protect me for a while, so I can figure out how I can bring myself back. The real me. The one I left behind! Maybe then I'll... I could..."

You feel your accursed mind getting confused with wires crossing crossed wires. The electrical storm occurring from within hurts your head, and you have to wonder if you're having some sort of well-timed, well-located spiritual experience.

Of course, you are not. It's probably a combination of a bad mental day and a concussion. You could seriously use a doctor. The buzzing and crackling subsides to a hum which ebbs away to that nothing that was felt just minutes before. However, you wish to pretend if only to patronize this cousin or, perhaps double, of your God.

"Just... All I ask... please... if it's not too much, God... I just want to see Mabel one last time. I mean, preferably, I want to see Mabel every single day for the rest of a long life, but... one night would do, okay? I just need a direction to head towards so I can spend at least the last night of my life with her, alright?"

Again, your voice dies down so you can listen to that hollow echo for a good while. And then, you give some sort of paltry and dejected thanks, and then you leave the confessional, and head back to the gaggle of poor souls who also wished for salvation on this impossibly hot, crushingly humid day.

\---

_"Please help me! There's no way I can go on like this! I really, really want to die, but I can't go through with it! Please help!"_

_Those were the words you said in the ER as Robert Schrock. The realization of what you had become since casting off your birth-name came hard and fast. It turned you into such a miserable wreck that you spent your day numbly wandering the streets of this small city mumbling and groaning and only vaguely aware of the world around you. Inside your head was an electrical storm commanding you to impulsively take your own life as you passed by various opportunities to dare the act. Miraculously, however, you were just phlegmatic enough not to try, yet when you happened past this hospital your first action was to stumble towards it like a beacon towards salvation._

_The next few weeks kept you in a safe environment from yourself. The pills you'd never bother to get a refill of since eases your burden for the time being, and the half-true version of your life you reveal to your doctors and peers is met with generally supportive results. You can try to get better. You have the choice. Try reconnecting with your family. You are worthy of a leading a great life, if that's what you want, and if you put in the hard work to make it happen._

_None of that advice is heeded when you are discharged, and within the week Robert Schrock can very well be considered dead, or one who never really existed in the first place. A ghost. At least, that's what John Hatcher and everyone proceeding him would call him._

\---

Stirring, you sit up from the cool tiled floor and stretch your limbs, and fix a crick in your neck. You had little else to do than partake in pizza that a group had pulled their money in for the benefit of everyone else and lethargically take a nap after.

The meal had been filling, the best you had in days, and with no real Internet nor people you could call friends, on top of your head injury, you had dozed off up against the wall. Admittedly, you have to bumble outside to warm your bones, and you realize you look silly wearing a hoodie in the midafternoon's triple-digits, but it's only when you start sweating that you feel comfortable sitting about the frigid church interior once more.

When you use the bathroom you check out the injury. Pulling hair out of the way, you see the bruise is not worryingly large, but it is a deep red, turning purple. You test the area, gritting your teeth to brace yourself of the ensuing sting; Thankfully, it doesn't feel like there's a skull fracture involved, though you take the time to clean the lump with cold tap water and some soap as a precaution.

Of course you take the time, bored out of your skull, to ask around if anybody knew where your sister lives. Around half of the time, you found the person you were asking couldn't speak English, and the other half, shockingly, hadn't a clue. One older woman hears your plight and believes you wholly, then leads you into a prayer.

It's odd. Somehow, you're not nearly as into putting into some kind of belief into a higher being than before, and before it was half-hearted at best. Against everything, you've remained steadfast in your logic in this arena, even in the night where you came closer to death than every other threat in your life, with guns pointed at your head that somehow never shot, in the throes of anguish, in the icy jaws of demons, or experiencing feverish drug-induced seizures that ravaged your body and memories.

Frankly, you were too interested in survival, and God was only invoked by name only in desperation. By your logic, God is a social construct, albeit an amazingly popular one. So, you think, no wonder you gravitated towards the confessional.

Your boredom starts gnawing at you again, and so you wander off once more towards a fairly large donation bin. Of course, you don't really feel up to picking out tacky t-shirts for yourself, despite needing to get more from all that's been stolen, but you rummage through it anyway as a form of entertainment. See what kind of dumb crap someone thought would be a good idea to put on a shirt. You're not interested in the jeans; Like everyone else, they're never your size.

You swear you see a jade hue as you rifle through the donation bin, and you find that your digging has gravitated loosely towards where you believe you saw that color. Eventually, you're tossing shirts and jeans out of the bin in your effort to find that mesmerizing hue. When you find it, your jaw drops.

It's a plaid, jade shirt. A little larger in size, probably for a man, you can't exactly tell, and the pattern is different slightly, but other than that it looks just like hers.

You mouth her name, uncertain in how much of a coincidence you've stumbled across. Logic tells you, simply, that this particular kind of shirt was donated here and by happenstance you found it. Yet, this almost perfect replica becomes instantly your second prized possession.

You wonder what she would think of how you've governed your life since her unfortunate departure. Would she feel angry that you threw away all of your potential and abused your body to where now you have self-rated severe mental deficits? Would she be sad instead?

Maybe, with this shirt, she's trying to tell you to stick with what you're doing. That you're on the right path. That she is pleased with your desire to change your tracks for a better future. Personally, you like this explanation the best. Its uplifting message rings in your chest and boosts your spirits.

Beyond logic, this is hers.

Beyond logic and your impaired knowledge of the paranormal, she's been looking after you.

Beyond logic, the man in your dream was speaking of _this_.

"Find her and you'll find her..." You breathe.

There is a presence within the material beyond any down-to-Earth reasoning you can put forth and you hold the shirt against your chest so to rock it in a hug; It's been forever since you've hugged someone other than yourself, and you become drunk from a small surge of oxycontin that, despite your logic, is released from your brain anyway.

It's sad to you that you're having this content reaction, but you don't mind too much. Mabel is coming soon. So right now, you'll take what you can get.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Mabel is coming very soon. I guarantee it.


	18. Resplendence

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Gonna be at Fanime this week, so if by any chance we meet up, you can scream in my ear about this chapter all you want. There is no way I'm going to regret this!

_Spasms._

_Your awareness partially returns to you as a full body spasm hits. You're sitting nude in a bathtub full of cool, off-color water. You try to pull yourself out of the water with leadened limbs, then almost smash your face on the porcelain of the bathtub, legs unable to bear weight and your head spinning and crashing and buzzing with a terrible energy fit for a supernova._

_Everything about your environment feels weird and rushed, like a speed sketch done completely shitfaced. What's happening to you? What did you take?_

_Another discordant crescendo tingles about, then discharges. More uncontrollable spasms. What is going on? Whose bathroom is this?_

_Your brain sparks and hisses and releases another intense paroxysm, and for a moment your head is submerged. Why is this happening? Are you dying? Where are you? Who..._

_Who are you?_

_You jump from the bathtub and fall from your fourth spasm in two minutes. Your head hurts so bad, and now the discovery of not knowing even your own identity has gotten you deeply upset and disturbed in this half-conscious state. The one thing you know is that you can't start to think about who you are, let alone every other question you have, until you get your hands on some aspirin._

_A more localized spasm hits your throat just as you call out for help, and you dry heave. You pull off further attempts much better than your first, opting for primal shouts, and two men soon arrive to your aid. You recognize them, but can't remember their names. They help you out and into a fresh set of oversized clothes and onto a couch. It would have been a cinch without the seizings. You can't stop having them, not that your delirium-addled mind could do much to try and bring them under control._

_You taste copper after one of them locks up your jawbone, and a quickly growing lethargy coupled with the headache makes connecting cause and effect impossible. Talking stings your tongue past the already sharp pain experienced. One of the men cracks open your mouth wide and takes a look at a bleeding mess._

_You must have passed out, because the next thing you experience is an ordinary living room. No filters are in your way of perceiving your surroundings. Must've come down when you were still out.Your head throbs much less than before, but your thoughts are both stuck in thick molasses and unable to focus on a singular thought. It's like a sugar rush but without the sugar nor energy._

_They ask you how you're doing, and you note a rust-colored piece of gauze falling out into your beard as you tell them with a thick impediment that you're doing better, then ask who you are. Your wallet is soon shoved into your confused hands, and you open it._

_You play with your name in your numbed mouth. It doesn't feel like it's the right name, but seeing that sad visage of yours jumpstarts your recall on who these two are in relation to you. Several seconds later, you sock the blonde man in the nose, and babble slurred, pained gibberish meant to demand what these two did you you. Your mind remains sluggish, but with the facts cobbled together you have a crude sketch of a memory._

_You burst into what you think is your room and pack the bare essentials, push your way past the two who are only trying to shove more cotton gauze and oral anesthetics in your bleeding, drooling, stinging mouth, and leave the house with a slam of the door._

_They don't follow you. That's how you rediscover then enter the trailer and rob them of a ziploc bag full of pills that you remember well enough on how they give you happiness; They're a beautiful neon blue. Two days out of town, tongue mending, and one pill missing, you call in to the county cops and try to rat them out._

_The cop on the other end can't understand half of what you're struggling to spit out, and you learn with deep regret that you forgot the name of the town you just left, and of your friends' names, and what street you lived on with them. As much as you want them to burn, there's nothing you can do._

_You don't know where you're going, but you find the bundle of past lives in your wallet, and it helps to partially retrace your personal history, albeit with the crude smears of crayon versus a more nuanced stroke of a pen. You still don't quite know who you really are right now, but the oldest ID you have inspires the idea to head towards Nevada._

_Something feels wrong in your chest._

\---

Ticking like an unreliable clock, your heart awakens you to an alarmed state. You place a worried hand on your sternum; It doesn't hurt, but you can feel the pulsations be indescribably off, somehow, unlike the sensations in your skull, which hurts with a describably electric sensation. It's been three days since the assault and your head still throbs harshly, just like this, most of the time.

Your chest settles, the headache dies down a little, and you pick yourself off of the ground, poke your head up above the brush, then hopefully begin an attempt at sneaking off. Encumbered with your bags, and spotting several people watching you slither out of the greenery, you consider the stealth portion of your mission to be a bust.

You feel tired, which is nothing that a cup of coffee doesn't fix. Irritated, your heart throws a small fit from how fast you guzzled it down, and the heat of the drink makes you sweat profusely in the summer air afterward, but you really do have to thank that businessman's generosity when you had ordered in an amnesic daze. You hadn't remembered that you were robbed until you had pulled your wallet open and gawked at the nothing inside the billfold.

Once your heart settles, you leave with a wobbly spring to your step, and grimace. Today feels like it's going to be one of those head days, the ones where it's extra hard remembering things, and you feel as though your trunk is attached to noodles for appendages from time to time. It's something coffee can't fix, unfortunately. You need simply to truck along with it.

You're sure at this point you could have easily stayed to look for for data on your sister on your laptop, and you're certain you've no idea where you're going. You stop to regroup in an alley and eat more from the giant bag of cereal with your hands. Even if you had a spoon, you'd still shovel this sweet nourishment into your maw using nothing but your oily palms. It's baffling why you'd often forget you have this nourishment, because you sure picked out some damn tasty cereal.

When you can't eat another bite, you put the food away, brush your hands off on your jeans, and stand. It takes a minute, after some of that brilliant sparkling in the middle of your head tapers off and your vertigo to ebb away, for you to remember that a library is indeed an option, and you set out.

You decide on asking for directions first, then about your sister, to everyone that you initiate eye contact with. At least one person steps back to hastily march in the other direction, glancing over their shoulder to look at you every couple of seconds, though you can't pinpoint the main reason why that could be.

It feels like it's been forever since you've actually bathed, so you go with that. Maybe though, your repeated questions of where the library could be after getting clear directions multiple times but not having them stick could also be it. Yet perhaps your asking of where Mabel Pines the artist, your sister, lives is legitimately creeping people out. Maybe it's all of these things at once.

Again, it's hard to pinpoint.

Definitely feels like it's going to be one of those days.

You were glad when, before the concussion, these days had become less frequent since the incident, but now it feels like it's back to before, where more days were covered in a thick fog than not, and you required help trying to navigate this world.

It's a miracle when you find the library. It's a branch location, but you take it regardless. The environment spins a little when you enter the cool interior, and you find an empty couch near the entrance to lay on for a few moments while your body catches up. The librarians look either irritated or concerned by your presence, possibly due to either seeing you as a hobo or a hobo with an obvious head injury, but either way they leave you alone, and you're grateful for that.

The jade shirt is pulled out from your bags, and you cradle it in your arms not long after sitting up. "Hey, so I'm gonna go continue looking for Mabel, Wendy. If you want you can help out. I'd really like that."

You have really taken to the shirt. You spoke to it a lot in the past several days as you layed about wherever, inside or outside, doing nothing otherwise but sleeping off the concussion. Good sensations sloshed through your tired husk when you mumbled whatever was on your mind to the jade clothing. It was as though you weren't alone, and that the more you spoke to this simple article of clothing, the more you became convinced of good karma heading your way. _Find her and you'll find her_.

Ideally, you wanted to search after your day in the church, but you were so sluggish, dazed and tired that tending to yourself sounded like a far better idea. You don't regret this choice, necessarily. If anything you've recovered to where today's the first day you really feel the energy in getting back down to work, brain fog be damned.

It's with that brain fog though that you are mentally knocked off-kilter when you set yourself up at a table and turn on your laptop. An e-mail client? You're baffled. What is going on? You don't know why you'd be e-mailing someone. By all accounts, you know nobody, figuratively. The client tells you that you have one new e-mail, and your curiosity and confusion compels you to click to your inbox.

_Re: It's me, Dipper_

"Mabel?!"

Your heart leaps, and you disregard the hiss a library-goer makes at you to be quiet. That e-mail you had sent and resent to her comes back to you in its entirety, and you can't open the reply quickly enough to your satisfaction.

This is it. This is it! You can hardly contain your excitement. Mabel finally read the e-mail and responded back to you. Of course she would, why wouldn't she?!

She is going to meet up with you after so long, and you swear that when you see her you are going to give her the tightest hug you can manage, comfort her, tell her you regret leaving so long ago and promise from the bottom of your heart that you never will again.

Your laptop is a miserable hunk of trash; Why won't it load faster? You need to know where to go, or what to do or, hell, whatever it is Mabel has to say to you immediately. Elation can't be contained from the mere idea of Mabel sending out a message for you. You need to know now! You grasp the sleeve of the jade shirt.

The e-mail opens!

_I'm sorry, but I don't want you to follow me anymore. Please go away._

...Your heart sinks.

You feel weakness from the very core of your body radiate outward to the tips of your fingers and toes, tingling your brain, and killing every fiber of hope you had harbored mere seconds ago.

Mabel... doesn't want to see you?

You slump forward at your table, sprawling your elbows wide and loosely grabbing your head in anguish.

"No..." You choke. "Oh, God, Mabel... I'm..."

Your hands slide down to harshly rub at your face. This needs to be another nightmare. That old computer had to have frozen hours ago and you had to have fallen asleep from waiting. A hand is pulled back and sharply smacks your cheek several times, but you don't feel awakened.

This is real. Mabel rejected you.

You're afraid. No, this can't be real at all! You send a reply back asking simply why, that one word, before you comprehend what you are doing. The worldview you had been latched onto and fed off of had been slaughtered in one strike, but you don't want to believe that it is so.

On closer look the reply was only sent two hours ago. Why? Why did it take Mabel so long to answer? Had she been busy? Did she not see the message until then? Did she write a long message detailing why she loathed you so much after shattering everyone's hearts, only to erase it all and go for a simple, one line declaration of her wants?

Your eyes are glued to the screen, and your soul is careening off into a terrifying void where it may never return. You're grasping at some semblance of composure, namely the shirt, afraid to let go. It'll be the death of you if you do. Not twenty minutes elapses before your inbox alerts you to a new message, a non-reply from another address: _-No subject-_. You click.

_Whatever it is you have planned, you can just stop it. Leave Mabel alone. She doesn't want to talk to anyone like you, nor is interested in ever meeting face-to-face, and neither am I. Go back to wherever it is you came from and don't ever come back, scumbag._

_-Dustin_

Nothing in your head is able to transmit a clear signal on where to go from here. Everything is scrambled, and that sparkling in your gray matter is ferocious. You robotically turn off your laptop, put it and the shirt away, and shuffle out of the library and down a long series of city blocks. The sunlight serves merely as further aggravation to the electric headache that is disturbing your clarity about the outside world so severely.

The world plays out like a ill-cared for reel of film, dull in color and sharply degrading in quality as your psyche spirals into a breakdown. Dark sparkles flash in for singular frames, and your eyes dart about attempting to catch them; You're convinced they're actually there, and you swat at these hallucinations uselessly as they vanish and then reappear somewhere else in your field of vision. These specks of void are staring you down, pleased at your grave misfortune, of karma finally catching up to your sorry ass.

You're a terrible excuse for a human being. You have dragged people down to your level to drown, watched people die, lied about who you were, helped people pull crimes, ruined others both as petty revenge and as a futile attempt to repent for your past actions.

You are a scumbag.

"I'm a scumbag." You moan, zombie-like, to these dark, beady pupils, and against the hiss of agreement that meets your ears, those thousands of tiny, hellish eyes refuse to leave. "Please leave me alone. I know who I am now! Just leave me to rot!"

You sense more eyes beyond your own limited field of vision train onto you in this fucked up movie reality you've become trapped in. You stare wild eyes back at several of these pairs until they awkwardly break contact. You want to grab these eyes by the collar, and yell spittle into them, asking why they stopped gawking. Hot friction and pressure inside your head halts you from starting that action, the only source of reason left to protect you from harm.

"Why can't I do it? I gotta do it. I'm a scumbag. Gotta act like one..." Your whines have no inflection while they battle reason. "I gotta hurt people. I hurt. It's what I do best. I must..."

Your better judgment doesn't know how to respond to that line of reasoning. By all accounts, it makes total sense that you are nothing more than a terrible lowlife that has done nothing better with the time they were given.

You could have been someone with a good life, despite witnessing trauma. You could have admitted you needed help overcoming that, or overcoming the substances you had used as a coping mechanism. You could have stayed. Finished high school, gone off to college.

Even if you had been an addict, you still would have been trying to fight everything as a good guy. Problematic, sure. Traumatized, but not bad. Only a small handful of issues versus the insurmountable load you've amassed taking this route, burning bridges as you cross them, praying fervently for your problems to stop stalking you.

"I'm not worthy of anything good. I should've known by now."

That tenuous grasp on reality continues to slip away from your fingers. Judgment directs you into yet another of New York's infinite alleyways so when you do snap, it's in the relative privacy of the shadows, away from anyone that you could hurt in the cyclone that is your torment.

"I'm not worthy of a life. I'm not worthy of anything good. I'm not worthy o-"

You stop in your monologue, and for the first time since reading that e-mail you can sense your emotions. They're free-falling, reacting to what you were going to say before the word was uttered. For the sake of solidifying your descent, you utter it anyway.

"...love."

You drop to your knees, and shrug off the bags off of your body. The building pressure inside your brain cannot contain itself a moment longer, and it overloads your sad form.

You hold your arms around your chest, squeezing yourself tightly, as though if you hugged hard enough it would somehow convince you that you are lovable.

You scratch violently at your forearms until the raised welts on your skin prick with blood.

You let go of yourself when you hear cackles, and punch the spots as they appear on the brick walls until your knuckles drip.

You try to punch and strangle the black spots that have encroached onto your skin and neck, wishing to kill these microscopic beasts out of existence, not realizing these are hallucinations manufactured by a brain going haywire.

You beat your bloodied fists into your head.

You grab and tug locks of dirty hair until the yanking irritates your scalp. 

You shout incoherently, wordlessly, primally. Again and again and again, your screaming reaches the very limit of how loud your larynx can belt out this to sieve the mental agony.

None of this works, and your arms slacken in time to your breath hitching upwards, then you slump forward, hands on the ground, trying to weather it all but making the ground below you wet as you fail to mitigate your suffering.

"Mabel?" Your voice is flat. "Mabel, where are you? I've been looking everywhere in this goddamn city. I... I don't know where you are. I need you." Your voice, starting out low, begins to pick up in volume. "Why are you trying to hide from me? Am...a-am I not welcome back?" Further it goes. "Because, truth be told, I can't blame you if you don't want me back. But I really need you." Further. "It's lonely. I'm lonely! I need you!" Further. "I don't know how much longer I can hold out without you here with me!" Further. "I just want things to be okay again!" Further. "I need you!"

A hand is clasped over your mouth before it babbles on any more, but it doesn't stop a muffled howl from breaking its way through and making this tiny corner of the world consisting of you and some mangy cats aware of your suffering.

This ignoble position you cling onto melts and you slump towards a wall, between a dumpster and a trashcan. With two free hands covering your face, you beg.

"I'm sorry... I'm sorry... I want you to... but you can never... God... forgive me..."

It is here you give up.


	19. Shooting Star

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am back and I have with me the first of the final chapters of this story. You thought there wouldn't be more? Well, there's more.
> 
> I have a tendency to forget the names I decide on for chapter names on a very frequent basis, so when I remembered what I actually wanted to name the last chapter I went ahead and changed it. Because I can't shut up about The Mountain Goats, [that particular song](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZlA1yyWVoGU) is basically a continuation of the first song on that album had the narrator given up on actually going home. Seems appropriate enough to name it that.
> 
> Anyway, onwards.

Your hair is clumped together in dirty, greasy locks underneath your stolen trucker cap. Your skin is covered with mosquito and other bug bites that have since scabbed and bled and received light infections, and your knuckles are still torn and hurting. The stubble that'd been growing on your face has gotten minutely longer, but levels grimier. You haven't changed out of your clothes for nearly a week. How could you when you've worn all but one article in your bags to hell and back? How can you when you're a scumbag?

You can't recall the last time you took a shower, but the wave of depression that had swept you away had washed to a still, apathetic expanse. It doesn't matter when you last had a bath, and it doesn't usually matter the last time you've eaten, until the shakes prove too difficult to ride and you're off on an unwanted survival instinct, begging for money or food, and eventually struggling your way to a meal. That bag of cereal has been gone for a while.

Some of the bites on your arms look like needle marks to the untrained eye, so you've been hard-pressed to get any help, especially in the last few days. Already you've passed out once. Mostly, though, when you're not wallowing in your filth, or wishing so fervently that you had been shot to your death by that predator weeks ago, you wander listlessly about. Oftentimes, you stop in alleyways for shelter and remain there, lying down, catatonic for hours, until your need for food outweighs your desire to rot, and you shamble out, shaking, with the very countenance of a heroin addict.

This is what you've been reduced to.

\---

_Colors._

_Endless swirls of earthen colors._

_You feel so very cold._

_Your clothes feel so cold. You want to rip them off to get rid of the cold._

_Cold._

_That's all you know._

_On one side, unbeknownst to you, you're beginning to succumb to severe hypothermia, and on the other various intoxicants are pillaging your senses. You've stopped shivering a while ago. Was it ten minutes ago? An hour?_

_Cold is all you can sense; You're too enfeebled to hear, or feel, or see, or sense time. You could be mumbling or yelling, you don't know. Everything is numb, and everything is cold._

_If you could pray for your soul you would, but you can't. You physically can't._

_You're cold. So very cold._

_Cold..._

_Something blue and warm touches your face, and you hear some odd, pressured burbling beyond the thickets of your altered consciousness. Something warm envelopes your trunk, but your clothes are stopping you from wholly absorbing this precious sensation. You swat sluggish, stupored arms, or maybe you hallucinate that you did, wanting to peel the cold clothes off. You see nothing, and yet you see some kingly threshold toddle and sway towards and away from your limited awareness._

_You want to go there._

_You physically cannot._

_It gets dark, then it gets very light and very warm. The all-encompassing warmth is a reminder, not of your memories, but of a collective memory; It's like you're back in your mother's womb. You're so very warm and content and happy, not caring about the world you cannot sense. This cocoon and its warmth is your world. It's the only thing that matters._

_It gets dark, then light and warm again. It's very bright and mostly white. You're slowly coming to on a bed, swaddled in a heating blanket. Your toes and fingers feel numb, but they can miraculously move and they're tingling back to life with a vicious feeling of heat encompassing the digits. Someone in scrubs walks up beside you, and looks gently into your dazed eyes._

_"John Hatcher?"_

_You can barely focus your own eyes to this person. "N-nuh. Dip'r Pines..." Your disoriented state can only remember what is most natural for you._

_"No, sir." They correct. "You're name is John Hatcher. Do you know where you are right now?"_

_"...Dead?"_

_"Um... N-no, sir, you're in a hospital. You were found outside. You were very cold and severely intoxicated. Do you remember any of that?"_

_You think hard. "Cold. F'lt cold... yeah..."_

_Your mouth can only sluggishly form words and drool, and your brain can only pick up on some of what both you and this person is saying. They continuously brush their fingertips across your lips to quiet your delirious moaning._

_"You're a lucky man that someone found you in time." You hear them say._

_"Nuhh. Got nothin'. Not lucky."_

_They shrug. "If you were any more intoxicated, or if twenty more minutes had passed, you could've gone comatose for who knows how long, or worse. Seems pretty lucky to me."_

_Eventually you are left to sleep the rest of the hypothermia and drugs off. A jolt of panic hits you when you wake up half-sober in your dream and piece it all together, and within the day you are halfway across the state, heading westward, destined to pass into nowheres and podunks for years to come._

\---

Today, you wake up from your memory of the cold in wonderment. Yesterday you had crossed paths with a small group who were more than happy to try to ease the psychic pain engraved in your sad form with some pot and a meal. You appreciated the latter, and a little of the former, for helping you feel comfortable with the idea of a free, hefty lunch and some company. Outside of that, you lamented, it didn't do much good, and you feared having a nightmare, as-per-usual whenever you indulged in that junk.

However, this wasn't a nightmare, or at least not what you usually dreamt. All you can really think for a few minutes is how odd that was. Afterwards, you think for two or three hours to simply twitch your legs halfheartedly, trying to at least sit up through the crippling depression. You couldn't do it, and you couldn't shoo a rat perched before it could relieve itself, but when you became threatened by a broom-wielding cafe owner who wanted you off their property, you found the ability to go, perhaps very sluggishly, but leaving nonetheless.

Your body is so caked in filth that the rat urine is hardly noticed once it dries from the other accrued stains and odors. You could use a shower, you kind of guess, but you don't feel up to it. You don't feel like going to that one last refuge. Like in Iowa, but for a different series of reasons, you are undeserving of shelter.

It's confounding once you realize you've been keeping your sad lurching within the confines of Brooklyn. The search has been over for about a week, deemed as much of a failure as you, and you've let yourself go to the elements, caring little at any one moment whether you live or die.

Physically, your own body wants to shut down, and were it not for the instinct to eat and the ensuing thick beats of a desperately hungry heart cropping up, you would let Death have at you. Why, then, are you bumbling in a strange corner in this borough? It's over. You're over, and once a motive is able to show its ugly face will your own finally vanish.

You think that maybe today will be that day. Actually, scratch that.

Today is definitely that day.

You're poking out of that depressive lethargy and feeling motivated to do something. Already, you've changed out of your shirt and into the one last piece of clean clothing on you, the jade long-sleeved plaid shirt, for comfort. You're out of options, and you wonder what she'd think of all of this you're plotting out, but you glean some minute amount of contentedness that you'd at least be meeting her real soon.

It's nice to you that you've finally chosen to do something. The last thing you'll ever do, but something nonetheless. It's calming. Soothing. Comforting.

Again, desperate hunger takes ahold of your thin frame and makes it downright impossible to think of more than eating something, anything, to kill the shaking feeling in your bones. You wait cautiously just out of view behind a street performer for nearly half an hour before you strike and steal twenty dollars when the performer and her small audience were distracted by a commotion further down the block.

You hated doing that. Pulling a crime such as that for the reason of desperation always left you with a bad taste in your mouth, and this time is no exception, but you haven't eaten in about a day. Food is a necessity. And besides, you're more or less a dead man now. It doesn't really matter too much what you do, so long as you can reach your end goal, whatever that may be.

You stop in a small liquor store and drop your bags at the entrance to grab the sugariest, fattiest, wrapped pastry and soda you can get your grimy hands on. A small timer in your head is indicating that you are going to pass out shortly unless you get sugar pulsing through your body, despite losing the extra weight on your shoulders. There is no pretense; The very second you find that huge, beloved bear claw you tear right in it, in front of the store-owner. It's your last meal, why the hell not?

"Hey, hey, HEY! You gotta pay for that!"

"I know." You choke down a thrice chewed bite. "I got your money. Just please hold on a moment?"

The shopkeeper's blunt language blurs in your ears as you are too busy wolfing down precious energy, but the very second the last morsel passes your lips you run over to the fridge in the back and scan through your options. Honest to God, this store carries Pitt, and you grab a can and head for the counter. Immediately, you quiveringly slap the twenty down in front of the owner.

"See? Told you I had the money. I'm just... really starving, you know?" You twist your brimmed cap, the one for an Oklahoman steakhouse, for an apology.

The owner takes your money harshly, but his voice sounds anything but. "Ah, say no more. Homeless, I take it?"

You think. "I guess you can say that at this point. I mean, I left my apartment in Nevada to look here for family I've lost contact with years ago. Hasn't gone too well. I had t-I'm almost broke." It's better, you think, if the storekeeper doesn't suspect you'd been stealing, for a number of reasons. "Um..."

"Yeah?" The register opens up and he starts picking your change.

You know that you've called off your search, relegated yourself to living a depressed, isolated, homeless life for only a few hours more, but you decide through your mental weakness, again, what the hell. "Question: Do you know a Mabel? Mabel Pines?"

You see the ten, some singles and an assortment of change be painfully taken out as the man thinks. "Mabel Pines... Pines... Mabel...Oh yeah! How could I forget a girl like her?!" The storeowner nods briskly once an image plasters itself across his mind. "She comes here just about every other day if she's not busy with her stuff. Usually her art."

This news slaps you in the face and ignites within you a flicker of hope that is captured, vice-like, by your soul. You're still very much fearful of more rejection, but at the same time, luck has finally decided to bless you and cause your dead spirit to be resuscitated.

"She does? When?!" Your voice is practically a yell, and you don't know if your deep breathing is anticipation or trying to stave off unconsciousness. "Please, I have to know!"

He squints his eyes in thought as he speaks slowly and unsurely. "Ehhh... why should I let you know?"

"Because I'm her brother!"

"Mabel never told me she had..." He stops that thought as he remembers some key detail. "Wait, she _did_ tell me once or twice that she had a brother that'd gone missin' as a teenager. Poor girl. It's been nine or twelve years or somethin' around there?" He leans in to you on the counter. "Now, look. Normally I don't trust people that make crazy claims like this. Don't know if you're him, but I'll tell ya she's kinda been startin' on tryin' to find her brother again."

"She has?!" Your eyes brighten further, albeit your deep hunger leaves you confused. You need to scratch at the bites peppered on your exposed arms.

"Yep. Last coupla months. Hasn't gotten too far, I'm afraid. She and her husband or something -- I think either he's her husband or fianceé -- got burned out two or three times by some real lowlives sayin' they're him." You feel a chill run down your spine as he looks back up to you. "I tell ya, it's tough seeing Mabel getting upset like that. Last time it happened, she told me that she's gonna check every forehead on every guy that tells her it's him. Said something about a very crazy-lookin' birthmark."

You blush hard and break out into a small sweat; Your heart chokes and skips a number of beats to where it makes you lightheaded. "I see." You quickly turn the conversation back a little. "Man, people are lying to Mabel? That... that's terrible! Why are they doing that?"

The storeowner shrugs. "Probably know she's a pretty successful artist. Has it going pretty good, comparatively. I mean seriously, two bedrooms? That's pretty good 'round here!" The owner busts a gut laughing. "Anyway, she let the last guy stay overnight, but when she and Dustin got up the next morning a bunch of their stuff went missing... and so did the guy."

"...Oh... oh God."

Those e-mails. They weren't about you. _They didn't know it was you!_

"Yeah, but sir, I'll tell you this now; If you are who you say you are, you'd better have that weird mark or some damning piece of evidence that proves you're him, because if you don't," He leans in and glares violently into your eyes as he finally gives you your change. "Then you'd better just go on your merry way to wherever it is you're from, got it?"

You nod and feel a dark void settle in your mind. "Alright. Thanks. Another question: Can I sit outside while I drink this? I-I think I'm gonna pass out if I don't sit down real soon."

That aggressive look in the man's eyes snap back to their vaguely helpful demeanor. "Sure, I guess you can. Just don't loiter about too long."

"Alright, cool. Thanks."

You pocket the change and dart outside with your bought things first, then slide down the building's outer wall and onto your butt before the world spins even more out of control than your arrythmias. Several deep breaths are taken to calm your stressed heart before you crack open the soda so as to inject more sugar into your bloodstream.

The setting sun is in your left eye, and said eye is tightly screwed shut while you enjoy an old classic in the hot summer air. The people that pass by you stare with caution at the odd-smelling, dirty, potentially one-eyed young man enjoying his soda before moving on with their lives. Several of these people enter the store you were in, and you pick up on some light conversations between the owner and some of his regulars. Two or three ask about you, and thankfully the owner tells them you're harmless, albeit needing a bath.

"Well... guess I know the old saying about beggars." You mutter wistfully to yourself as you shake the can and hear the clatter of the peach pit. "Considering I am one at this point."

The shakes have disappeared, and so you venture standing up and testing your body's ability to stay upright. Your shoulder brushes a woman's as she enters the store, but instead of smacking you and throwing up accusations, she appears too hyperactively content in her own world to really recognize you. 

You chuck your trash into a nearby trash bin, and you heft the duffel bag onto your tired shoulder, your ears pick up something that stops your heart instantly.

"How's it goin', Mabel?"

And for the first time in ten years, you hear your sister, and she sounds as happy and carefree as she ever was.

"Oh, you know, pretty much the same as always, Leo!"

You mouth her name over and over in absolute bewilderment. You've done it. You've actually found her! By some miracle, by pure accident, like finding a shooting star in a sky thick in clouds and smoke, you've actually, finally found Mabel!

Your thoughts becomes muddied in the torrent of emotions you're feeling just by hearing your own sister for the first time in what feels like a lifetime. By some act of God, after all this pain, you hit paydirt! You seriously wish you could run back into the store and hug her tight, but you dare not out of common sense. Instead, you opt to hang back close to the entrance and listen with a keen ear.

"That's excellent to hear! Very good!" Leo's voice changes again on a dime. "So, how's that search going?"

Mabel sounds confused at that. "What're you talking ab-"

"You told me about your missing brother before, Mabel." Leo sounds apologetic for ruining one of his happier regular's mood.

"Oh." Mabel's voice drops. "Oh right. Still got nothing."

"Mmn. Sad to hear."

There is a painful silence. "Yeah," Mabel utters. "Kinda wish Dustin would stop worrying so much. I mean, most of the time he's amazing. But I think what happened made him freak out. We fought over an e-mail that I swear Dipper really did send me! Dustin promised he'd help but..." Your sister sighs. "It's difficult, Leo. Dustin wouldn't agree to the idea of meeting that guy in public. But, just... how can we tell if the guy's Dipper without even seeing him?!"

You frown, and drag a hand down your face, stopping to rub at the small beard you've grown the last few weeks. You understand what happened. It was the robbery. It was Dustin's paranoia. Mabel never wanted to reply like that.

"You know, a smelly man was in here not too long ago and was asking about you."

You can't help but blush in shame about your poor odor now, but you quickly focus back to the conversation at play.

"Did he have a birthmark on his forehead?" Mabel sounded too blunt, too matter-of-fact just then. Tired. She's being careful.

"Forehead? Nah, nothin' big like you say."

Your sister sighs. "Great. Another scumbag thinking he can get away with fooling me." Each word is like a dagger to your poor heart. "No... Dustin would be the one saying... did he say something about how he got his birthmark removed too?"

"Nah, Mabel. Guy seemed more concerned about eatin'. Did claim he was your brother, though."

"I knew it." The response was downright dark. "Another one. I... no... should I...?"

"I get it, Mabel." Leo's voice sounds like it's smiling as reassurance. "You don't know who to trust. And, lemme tell ya, it's not bad to have a little bit of distrust, or is it to have a little bit of faith." Leo wavers. "Speakin' of distrust I... I probably shouldn't have told him it was okay for him to rest outside. Did you see anybody there when you entered?"

"I... wait, what?" Mabel quivers a little. You bristle. "I... did. Was he carrying any bags?"

"Yeah... a duffel bag and backpack."

Oh, crap.


	20. Resolve

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you all so much for reading! There are only several more chapters left, but I just want to say this right now, because the reviews I've gotten are all amazing and puts a big grin to my face. So, again, thank you all.

This is very, very bad. It shouldn't be this way at all, but if Mabel sees you now, as you are, in this context, you're going to experience a living nightmare. The alarm bells going off in your head tell you to hit the deck, and before you can think you cheese it around the corner and dive into the first deep divot in the buildings you spot, close your eyes, and listen hard for any indication of if Mabel followed you.

The city is too loud and conversations drown each other out, but you try and listen for any hint that can clue you in on whether your half-assed escape succeeded or failed. You get nothing. You open your eyes after several minutes and relax your body as much as your frazzled psyche allows.

Whatever the reason, Mabel did not find you. There is immediate regret about your act of cowardice, but what else could have been done? Stayed? No. Mabel would have raised hell with you. She has no idea who you are, and with everything that she had been through in her own quest to find you, her brother, her guard may be too hyperactive.

You groan. This hurts. Your body hurts. Your mind aches. Your chest screams. You feel so tired.

Living on the streets certainly has been taking a toll on your body, and you briefly wish you had the money to take a bus straight back to your wasteland apartment just so you could have a comfy bed to sleep in and enough food to live off of. Unwanted tears form in the corners of your eyes, then break into twin tracks down your face. Just how much more can you possibly take of this personal hell? You're flat broke, starving, smelling like shit, and the sister you've been scouring for in this behemoth of city and have finally, _finally_ found will shut you out if you approach her.

You're so far from home, and it's hard to think, and you're at a complete loss.

You stare numbly out into the street and resign yourself to watching people pass by because, face it, there's nothing better for you to do now. If, by some strange reason, you still had your pills, you assume you'd down the whole batch just to see what would happen; One pill would always get you sky high, and three or four would make you black out and come to with some chest pain, so perhaps all of them would have done you in. But they're gone now, so you can only guess at what that meal of pills would do to you.

After a long, drawn out sigh, you start to hum a meaningless tune to yourself to try and pass the time as you people-watch. The world is bathed in that late afternoon orange now, and the little song you drag out is in stark contrast to that complicated yet simple beauty.

The thought of actively seeking suicide had been rattled out of your psyche by the events at the store, but it doesn't stop you from thinking how it would be a massive favor if you were allowed to fall asleep now and never wake up. Maybe you just up and die, or maybe someone stabs you in your sleep; Any reason, really, would be alright by you.

Perhaps the idea of suicide is seeping back into your brain though, the more you think of the futility of your position.

That is yanked out again when, among the dozens of people that pass into your narrow field of vision of the outside world, you see Mabel from your alleyway post on your side of the street as she walks by with a grocery bag.

Adrenaline hits several seconds later when your sluggish mind processes that and realizes the deeper meaning. She's going _home_. There's only one, immediate chance to ever follow Mabel to her home, and deep in your bones you know it.

Resolve builds up. You can follow her back to her place, and try to talk to her there! If you don't take this chance, you may never have this chance come up ever again. You're not certain how quickly your health is going to decline, only that your body can't take these conditions you've put it through any more. You've been dealing with injuries, hunger, hygiene, and there's no problem in dropping all of your fears and despair because of it; These endless years of suffering need to end now! You really want to see Mabel more than anything in the world.

Bags are quickly gathered and you step out onto the sidewalk. There are several people between you and her, but your eyes lock onto Mabel and your sore body hastens urgently. Mabel appears slowed down by the heavy grocery bag she has to carry, but it's still hard to keep up with her lively pace. Deep down, you pray to God that she doesn't turn a corner or, worse, turn around and see that crazed man Leo described to her. When God refuses to listen and makes your sister turn at the third corner, you bolt forward and around to keep her in sight. The skipping sensation in your chest ordering you to stop and rest is wholly ignored.

Punishment comes in the form of your vision growing dark momentarily, though as it returns and you see Mabel again, she appears edgy. You can tell something is telling her that she's being followed, and as a last ditch you slow down and look across the street, pretending to be interested in anything or anyone else when she turns around to check.

Ten seconds, and you take a gamble. She's looking ahead once more, and you feel good that you went successfully undetected. A few seconds more and you've succeeded again as she turns to face an apartment entrance, fumbling between the bag and the key getting herself inside. You try to hurry, but the door snaps shut just before you can reach the opening, nearly crushing your fingers in the process.

"Dammit!" You breathe heavily. "Almost..."

It's a very short wait before a wiry stranger opens the door, phone in hand, and steps out into the world, and you're able to slip in long before this second opportunity passes. You become distracted by the apartment lobby, and breathe a comment to yourself that it's a pretty well-kept place. It's not elegant or lavish by a long shot, but the walls exude decency and respect. It's been such a long time since you've found yourself in any type of home like this, and it feels both strange and welcoming to your haggard soul.

You look to the left wall, and Mabel can just be seen inside an elevator before it closes shut. There's a flight of stairs nearby that beckons your sick body to run up, and despite knowing better, you listen to those steps over your heart.

The stairs make your rapid footfalls heavy, and your ailing body has an absolute hatred of one of mankind's most simple yet genius inventions. Every floor you stop to check for those long locks of brown both up and down the hall, then force yourself up another flight, faster than the last, when you see no one. On the sixth floor, you notice Mabel going through a door far down the hall to your right in the very nick of time.

"Oh God," A smile breaks through your panting. "Oh God, yes, I found h-Aagh!"

The pounding run up the flights of stairs catches up to your sore ankle and, with a small stumble and twist in the wrong way, it locks up in blinding pain. You collapse onto your knees and crawl your way over to a wall, but at the same moment your pounding heart goes into an apparent seizure.

The only real clue that you aren't having a heart attack is that you can still feel your left arm, but the pain and uneven ping-pong between all-too-rapid heartbeats and nothing at all, on top of your resprained ankle, brings you to their mercy. Your cheeks are puffed out, and it takes every fiber to not shout out. You can't. You're so close now. You don't want to be taken away by ambulance.

Nobody is in the hallway at the moment, so you unload your belongings and lie down. You can feel your heart vomiting up the blood it tries to pump in, and between that and all the flutters and ticks it makes alongside convinces you that this is how your life ends, and your silently await your ultimate fate for five painstaking minutes.

You're amazed that you seem to go unnoticed by every tenant that passes by your prone body, and a little bit concerned as well. Within half an hour, the frail muscle sitting behind your sternum miraculously calms down, and while it still is skipping more beats than usual, you're certain now that you're going to survive after all. You sit up to check out your body's energy level. It's weak, spent from the cardiac episode, but you're sure enough that you can hobble yourself through this one last task ahead of you.

Bags are sluggishly gathered for what you pray is the final time in your mission, and you stagger to your feet, heavily favoring one foot over the other. Mabel's apartment is still to your right, and you carefully try to remember which side of the hallway she disappeared into. It was, again, to the right, maybe the second or third to last door, and you start limping.

603... 605... You need to stop to let the pain from your ankle sieve... 607... 609... 611... 613...

You press your ear to this door and listen hard. There is a quieted conversation in a language you can't comprehend, and you realize this isn't it. You laboriously move to the door labeled 615, and listen in to hear a man first, then Mabel second, in what sounds like a very animated and fun back-and-forth. Your heart tries to force you back on your knees at this discovery, and yet you remain upright. The upbeat talk and laughter these two are having matters little to you as you raise a shaky fist up to the door.

"Okay. This is it, Dipper. It's really happening. You can't run away now. You... _deserve_ to return to your old life. You really do. You can't quit here, but... whatever happens, happens. Just gotta try." You swallow. "Okay. Here we go."

With determinate force, you thrice pound your fist onto the wooden door, and you stand there to await your sister. The conversation at hand goes dead silent.

"Did you hear that?" Mabel asks.

"Yeah." The almost alto but undeniably male voice answers. "Should I get that or-"

"Nah, Dusty. I'll get it!"

It's a fight whether or not to stand ramrod straight or keep yourself at this wilted position of yours between the eleven or so steps your sister bounds to the door. It's a sudden realization to you that the second the door opens, the ball will no longer be in your court, and you start to seriously doubt once again that she is going to take you seriously.

On impulse, the steakhouse cap is adjusted and twisted for luck, and you clear your throat. The hairs on your neck raise as your sister approaches. You wonder how many fully intact memories you can bring up to try and delay the inevitability of being ousted, and something in your fingers twitch for an important reason you can't figure out in time as the door opens.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Did I intend the apartment number to be 615? No, actually. That was a happy accident, if you can believe it.


	21. Convincing

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Surprise, two chapters in one weekend! Because suffering.

There, smack-dab in front of you, is a gorgeous young woman, ever so slightly taller than you, with your eyes and hair color. Her earrings glisten impossibly with most of the rainbow's colors, her cheeks are as full as ever, and it's all topped off with a polite, enthusiastic smile that accentuates the purity you've always felt in her.

Beyond her you see a short, lithe, bespectacled blonde sitting on the couch, staring right at you with nothing but distrust and incredulity. He appears to know exactly why you've showed up, and that vibe dances over to your sister who, while still holding a sweet, warm, cinnamon grin, starts to grow minutely weary of your presence.

"...Hello, sir! You appear lost. Are you looking for somebody?"

"Um... y-yeah." You stutter as your anxiety and anticipation starts to grow. You can't believe your own sister called you 'sir'. "Yeah, l-looking for someone..." You feel your sick heartbeat in your throat. "I'm, uh, I'm looking for... f-for you."

"What do you me-" You can feel the horror cross her mind and into yours as she looks at you, your bags, and pieces them back together to the little shop earlier. "Oh no, not _you_."

Her fiancé stands up at that. "Mabel, who is that guy?"

"He's the guy Leo was talking about earlier." It's the way your sister says that hurts. "It's another jerk thinking he can fool us. Fool me. Well, I'm not going to be fooled this time, mister!"

"N-no! Wait! You two have to believe me when I say that I'm Dipper!" You don't even bother to try hiding your utter desperation. "I'm your brother, Mabel! Please, you have to listen to me!"

"Does he have that birthmark, Mabel?"

Mabel turns to her fiancé. "No, Dustin. He..." Was that hesitation? "...He has some faint spots, but it's not the birthmark."

"Well, then, shut the door on him already!"

You can't believe that the old movie cliché of sticking your foot in the doorjamb would actually play out in your life, let alone it being your foot being jammed in and your poor ankle getting crushed by the force, but you can believe that your sister's gumption will cause her to try and kick your foot out and so you stick an arm inside as well. The action spooks her and hurts you more than your foot, and Dustin storms over.

"Hey, man, knock it off!" He warns. "Dammit, we need to get that loc... We're gonna call the cops if you don't get the hell away from here and leave us be!"

"I know, I know! It's hard to believe, but you both have to trust me!"

Your pleading sounds futile even by your standards, and you realize that you've since leaned in forward as though you'd try and muscle your way inside, ankle be damned. It's not rocket science to you that you're a terrifying scourge right now, and attempting to use any force is going to end badly for everyone. And, as you remind yourself, you're not in control of the situation anymore; You may want to re-enter your old life and can beg and plead all you want to be let back in, but Mabel is the one who is going to unknowingly make that decision.

She has that key, and you have a small beard caked in grime.

The best you can do, for the good of your fate, is to soften your body language, and think out your words hard.

"I... I know. I'm scary. I'm this strange bum to you, and I get that, but please, I'm only asking for one... well, okay, two things. I just want to sit down with you guys and try to explain my case and convince Mabel that it really is me. If I can't..." You feel a heartache. "If I can't, I'll leave and never bother you two ever again." You conjure up a little smile. "So, what do you say? Can we do that?"

"...What's the second thing?" Mabel asks you with extreme caution, and you blush.

"Can I have a bath first? I really, really stink."

Mabel looks back at Dustin, and he keeps stoic and defensive. There is a tense moment where you are certain your miserable little life is going to be shut closed, and Mabel looks you right in the eyes several times. The two of you are earnest about your wants in your eye contact. You want to convince Mabel, and you learn that Mabel, deep down, wants to be convinced.

The door opens.

"Well, we can't have you going back out there smelling like this, can we?" She says with a muted laugh. "We have fresh towels in the bathroom, and once you're done we can talk."

You shuffle yourself laboriously past the threshold. "Thank you so much, Mabel. Uhm... where's the bathroom?"

Dustin sighs and points to a small hallway. "First door to the left."

He clearly bothered by Mabel's choice, and is trying so very hard to show politeness to a man that he doesn't even want to begin trusting, but you show politeness back.

"Thank you, sir."

It's a surprise to you just how desperate you were for a bath. No time is wasted in dropping your things on the couch, and you grab the freshest set of clothes you have before diving to the bathroom, closing the door shut behind you, stripping down and drawing a hot bath.

It is the perfect temperature for you when you awkwardly get in and dunk your head under for twenty or so seconds. You relax yourself in this small slice of heaven you carved out for yourself and reach a state of zen while your skin slowly prunes and your sore, exhausted body is rejuvenated. You _needed_ this bath. If not physically then mentally.

By the time you reach for the bar soap and begin to clean yourself proper, you start to plot out what you should say. Which memories are both unique to the two of you and contact enough in your head? Instantly, you zero in on that first requirement; Gravity Falls, no doubt, had a ton of unique properties, and thus a plethora of unique stories have to exist in your mind.

And that's where your second requirement fails you. Almost, you scream at your destitute circumstances, but you keep yourself quiet as you double check the validity of your feelings.

There is a fuzzy, dreamlike quality to every memory dredged up of the place, and you realize that even the unique part of these memories are going to be a challenge for you. For all you know, you could be describing a memory or a weird dream you had. Sometimes you have trouble discerning if Ford was a real person. But, you still bring these memories up from the abyss, untangle them from themselves and each other and tag them for recall later.

"Mabel, you know just how likely it is that this man is Dipper."

Your ears pick up Dustin's doubting, quiet alto, and you listen in to a conversation in progress.

"I realize that Dipper is very important to you, and while I especially have some questions to your brother about just why the hell he ran away, I'd love it if I saw you reunited with him again. Don't get me wrong. I know he means more of the world to you than me. But I just want you to be careful."

"I know, Dusty. I'm trying so hard not to get carried away this time, but I just have a good feeling with this guy."

"You had a good feeling with the last guy, though." Dustin points out, unaccusing but still sticking to a matter-of-fact tone. "And we lost thousands of dollars in stuff. We had to get new cards, change so many passwords, replace the engagement ring... that simply can't happen again."

A sighs escapes your sister. "He looks so similar to Dipper, though! Did you see his hair color? It's exactly the same! And his eyes too! It needs to be him! It h-has to-!"

Dustin makes audible shushing noises, and you need to really strain your ears to understand what he's saying. "I know, I know, Mabel, but I can't stress enough that we need to be careful. People can make changes to their appearance, like with colored contacts and hair dye."

Mabel moans with a pain that pulls at your being. "I know. I just... I just don't want to have to start looking around for Dipper's death certificate. He needs to be alive. He needs to be that guy!"

There is further murmuring, but you can no longer make out what either Mabel or her fiancé are saying, though you hear your sister choke out a few sobs, and Dustin's conceding to having to comfort his future wife. It's a pointless endeavor to listen any more, so you resign yourself to scrubbing off the detritus you've accumulated the past several weeks until the bath water is tinged ever so slightly brown behind the soap scum caking its surface.

You lumber out and scrub off the remaining dirt with the clean towels you found in the bathroom closet, dusting off the excess dark rolls of skin and oil, then slide into your cleanest clothes, jade shirt and trusty hat included. Their odor belie your cleanliness, and you feel the task just ahead of you looming ominously over the horizon, but your spirits are raised in tandem with your self-respect. You missed feeling clean.

You almost swagger out of the bathroom on just your good foot alone, but managing to tone it down when the gravitas of this final challenge bears down on you.

"Had a good bath?" Mabel asks.

"Yeah. Sure did. Thank you so much, it felt great." You yammer. "Can't recall the last time I felt that good bathing."

She smiles and gestures you to the table she and her future husband are currently sitting at. "Real glad you enjoyed it, then."

It's hard to believe that the moment has finally come to pass, and with a hesitancy you try your damnedest to mask, you sit down across from Mabel and Dustin, the latter of which having a notebook and pen in front of him. Mabel nods at him, and Dustin, not her, starts it all off.

"Alright. Take off that hat so we can see that forehead of yours."

You're baffled, but yield to this request, taking off your steakhouse hat and brushing some minute locks of wet hair off of your brow to be inspected.

"Okay then. Guessing you had tattoo work." You nod, and he lifts up his hand. "May I?"

"Uh... sure, I guess?"

You keep your eyes gently closed and have this strange man's fingertips glance and grope across your forehead, trying to feel the contours of the tattoo work done so many years ago. Your eyes shoot open when Mabel's hand replaces Dustin's. Breath is held so she can really feel up this particular area of your face. She gets up close and studies the few remaining blemishes left, pursing her lips in deep consideration.

"Dustin's a makeup artist, so he knows a whole bunch on how people can change their appearance."

You exhale so you can respond. "Really?"

"Yeah, and you certainly had good work done on you if what you're saying is the truth."

Dustin's comment rubs you the wrong way and you just manage to keep yourself from bristling via a quick nod.

"It is."

Dustin says nothing, and neither does Mabel. Her eyes signifies to you that she is having some sort of inkling in your favor, but as Dustin said, the concealing work was good. Too good, you lament. Mabel leans back into her seat when she finishes up, and after a quick jotting of notes, Dustin continues.

"Alright. Now that's out of the way, we still don't know your name." Dustin clicks his pen several times more.

This confuses you. "What are you talking about? It's Dipper Pines."

He looks at you as though you're shitting him. "I mean your ID, if you have one. Can we see that?"

"Oh! Uh." You pull out your wallet; Already you feel like you've been forced into a checkmate. "Sure. S-sure thing."

The card is fished out and you push it to Dustin and Mabel. They study the piece of plastic with excruciating detail.

"So your name's Colin?" Mabel asks.

"Well, n-no. It's just a name I've been using to keep myself hidden. I think I have several more on me somewhere."

"Sure lost a lot of hair between then and now." Dustin notes. "Why is that?"

You shrug and are matter-of-fact with this question. "I didn't want to look like a loser when I got myself all the way over here."

Mabel unknowingly vouches for you. "Dipper ran off to Nevada all those years ago Dusty, and this is a Nevada ID."

"But Colin did say he has several more IDs, so this could be fake, or stolen, and he could be jumping about everywhere taking on new identities once the old ones no longer suit him."

"Kinda reminds me of Grunkle Stan." Mabel chuckles.

"Speaking of," You need to take this conversation into a different direction. "Remember back when... when... wh-when we, uh, did stuff with that guy?" Your memory's failing you at the worst possible time; Mabel and Dustin are certainly not impressed. "He... oh my God... h-h-he had a boat. The M-Stab... The Stan O' War?"

It was a nice save, and by your sister's raised eyebrows you can tell that you did pull out a fact. Dustin, however, remains stone-faced, and jots down notes in silence.

"That's right. It was called that." Mabel stares at you with big, hopeful eyes.

"But you've kinda spouted out a ton of facts like that online, Mabel." Again, there was no malice, and neither was there mockery for his fiancé; Just softly stating clear truths in front of your face. "For all we know Colin could have been studying. Much like the last-"

"Last guy." Mabel huffs. "I get it, already."

"Well, to be fully honest," You start to blather. "I did look around the Internet for information. I, uh, truth be told, have pretty poor memory nowadays, and I needed to help remind myself of a lot of things, actually. Though, heh, that boat though. I feel pretty proud of myself for remembering that by mys-..."

Dustin's tiny pupils stab into your flesh, which leaves you wondering how Mabel could possibly love a man with an icy blue stare between your self-deliberations on when punching yourself would be appropriate. You are here to prove yourself, and yet some broken electrical circuits in your head are failing to keep you in check.

"Memory problems, you say?" Dustin is the first to lay down his suspicion. "So you do admit to lurking about online studying Mabel." He's sneering, and had it been just you and him, he'd be kicking you out at this point. Instead, though, he leaves that choice to his fianceé, and thankfully Mabel, while cautious of you, is wishing to be cautious for you.

"I, um. Yeah. I do. B-but look, Mabel. Remember the, uh," You rifle through the memories you had tagged in the bathroom and take a stab. "The... the gnomes?"

"Gnomes?" Mabel's eyes brighten.

"You had mentioned them on Twitter." Dustin points out with another click of the pen and punctuates with some more scribbling.

Your memory is beginning to act like an old hinge given a fresh application of oil. "Then what about the... the, uh... zombies?"

"Mentioned."

"Those, um, unicorns!"

"Mentioned."

"The ghosts! The government agents!" Fingers are snapping. Dustin keeps shaking his head. "Time police! Your sock puppets!"

"All mentioned."

A certain shape you could never truly forget clicks effortlessly into memory. "Bill, then!"

"She's talked about him." Goddammit, Dustin hasn't missed a beat when it comes to this whole 'protecting Mabel from strangers claiming to be her long lost brother' thing. "Seriously, Colin, Mabel's talked about a good number of things online. You're going to have to try harder."

Mabel, meanwhile, looks at you with those innocuous eyes of hers, and it's apparent to you that she wants so hard to believe you with all her heart, but, at Dustin's constant reminders, is holding back.

"Well, then," You glance about the table. "If I can't elaborate on some shared memory, then what else can I do to convince you guys?"

Mabel purses her lips in thought, then her face snaps into a realization. "I got it!" She grabs Dustin's notebook and pen and shoves it to you. "Write your name! If it's really you, then your signature should be exactly the same!"

"Mabel," Dustin starts, and then glowers at you. "I really don't think this guy's your brother. Gonna say it right here. All he's been doing is scouring the Internet and collecting data so he can trick us."

"Dustin, I don't think you should be saying this in front of Colin." Mabel's voice is a whimper. "At least let him write down his name?"

Your sister's fiancé growls, visibly annoyed. "Fine! I guess!"

You are really beginning to hate Dustin. That four-eyes has treated you like complete shit even before you got here, and you want to spite this jerk with such humiliation that he has to beg you for forgiveness. The pen is clicked several times, and, remembering your name, Dipper Pines, you write your signature onto the paper.

It looks terrible, as though a five-year-old had written it. You want to give it another try, but you're afraid of giving Dustin the ammo to chew you out, so you hand the notebook back to your sister for study. She pulls the notebook close to her face, squinting and taking every little stroke of the pen into judgment. She peers up, into your eyes, then back down, then back up again, then down, and then bites her lip.

"Well, I kinda hate to say it, Colin, but I think..." She resists for a moment, and you feel a weight pull your spirit downward when she calls you that name. "I'm... really sorry. I want to believe you're my brother, I really do, but it's... I can't... this... doesn't look like his handwriting."

You keep your lips sealed. Of course it doesn't look like your signature, because you haven't used it in a decade, and you're quite certain your brain damage was thrown somewhere in there for good measure. Everything, it seems, was affected one way or another by that terrible incident.

"I think it's time for you to go now." Mabel finally says.

You bob your head downward in shame and despair. You have failed.


	22. Reunion

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Should warn that there is mention of suicide in this chapter in particular. Just a heads up.

In all honesty, you can't blame Mabel for erring on the side of caution, on Dustin's side, and distrusting your repeated assertions of being who you say you are, and you can tell that Mabel is absolutely torn about her decision.

As you heard from the bathtub, she feels you bear a striking resemblance to the brother she last saw. By what you could dredge up from your faulty mind made her really, _really_ want to take your insistence to heart. But there simply just wasn't that one, pure nugget of gold that would have cleared all doubt in the room, and so you need to fulfill your word and leave your sister to her life, forever.

There is superglue that is binding you to your seat. Two things are making you hesitant in saying goodbye to Mabel: the first being some feeling in your head that you have that gold on your person at this very moment, and you are frantically scouring every corner of your brain to remember what this thing is, as the second reason for wishing to stay is that the very moment the door closes behind you, you know you're going to either jump off a bridge or into a speeding train.

There's no way in hell you can keep living like this.

Robert survived that very first suicidal impulse when he realized how terribly he transformed his life. This suicide, as much as you hate to think it, would be a mercy kill.

Peter ultimately did run for his life, far away, not wanting anymore to do with the dangerous crimes and cocaine that gave him the bravado to play along. You'll be far, far away from here soon enough.

Calvin lived and relived the murder that had unfolded before his very eyes, yet somehow eked out a reason to live, even if it was only to see how he would ultimately die. Self-euthanasia.

Liam somehow saw the light of living by having the light of his past snuffed out, and stumbled out of the Dakotas as the blank slate of Colin, who thought and then acted on the thought that he deserved to be happy again. Maybe you'll be happy somewhere other than here.

And then there's John. Poor, reprehensible John. You could just barely hold onto staying in this realm as John; As a man who had mercilessly dealt drugs the last six months of his life to those more vulnerable than he was. As you were.

It'd be the best thing for your forsaken soul now.

"Guess you'll be needing this back sometime, am I right?"

Mabel finally pushes your current ID back to you, and a tiny, surprised chuckle miraculously escapes your lips as though you weren't currently having suicidal impulses at all. You take the ID with a weak, shaking hand.

"Yeah, thanks."

You pull out your wallet and place the card back in its proper place, but as you do you feel that profound itching sensation in your brain grow stronger. You feel like you're missing something very important, and you can't help but overtly express your disappointment in yourself.

"It's funny, Mabel. I can swear I have something in here that can prove I'm Dipper once and for all, but... I guess that's the thing when you suffer from long term memory loss." Mabel's expression is one of saddened empathy when she hears that, and you sigh. "For all I know, I'm probably making stuff up again."

You bristle when Mabel places a caring hand over yours. She has taken some form of liking in you since you've shown up. The stranger in front of her does remind her of her beloved lost brother an awful lot, you suppose, and you're starting to recall just how friendly she always was towards everyone, family or stranger. "Would you want to check anyway?"

The suggestion sounds more novel than what feels comfortable to you. "You mean my wallet?" Mabel nods. "Well, alright. I think that's possible."

There are several ancient receipts in the various folds that you pick out, and toss your pack of old IDs onto the table, which both Mabel and Dustin can't help but study. The earlier of the two, the one Mabel holds along with most of the pack, had your hair touching your shoulders, but your face clean-shavened; This was when you were Peter Brookes of Idaho. The second one, Dustin picks out, had your hair down past your shoulders, with a scraggly beard taking shape, and hurt and trauma in his eyes; Those eyes belonged to Liam Galewski. They can't help but study the both of them while you zero in on some ratty, folded up piece of photo paper.

Groaning, rusted cogs in your brain creak to life, telling you that this is exactly what you're looking for, though you can't see the reason why. However, you trust your subconscious as you take it out and unfold it face down. The whole world stops. It's your sister's signature, and you turn the paper around to see that old photo of you and her.

"Mabel." You're shaking, body, voice and all. "Mabel, I-I found it. L-look."

You practically shove the photo into her hands. In the first instant, she doesn't know what she is seeing behind all the folds and tears and utter decay, but, in the second instant, she recognizes the picture. She turns the photo around and her eyes widen at her own handwriting, and stays frozen before she looks at the photo side once more in mesmeration. Suddenly, she frantically flips through the IDs, until she drops the bunch and the picture onto the table, completely awash with astonishment at the faded image of a single person: Matthew Freeman. Your very first persona.

Where the only difference between him and Dipper was a near-complete lack of that unique birthmark.

When Mabel finally braves to look up from the photo and into your eyes, you can see her piece everything together. Her mouth drops and her eyes widen, and you do the same in return as you can't contain your own joy of being finally recognized by your own sister, but before you can say a thing she pounces on you and crushes you in the tightest hug you have ever had. The gesture is returned, down to the detail of soaking your own sibling's shoulders with your joyful tears.

"Dipper... oh God, Dipper! It's you! Oh my God! It's really you!"

Your name sounds like honey, giving you resolve to tighten your hold on Mabel. "Yeah, Mabel. It's me." You sniffle. "I'm right here. I-I'm back."

"Dipper," She starts. "We all thought you were dead! Mom and Dad had quit searching years ago, a-and I did too, but I never wanted to! I knew you had to still be alive somewhere!"

"Oh my God, Mabel, I thought I'd die before I could ever find you!" The thought gnarls your face into a tight simper. "Mabel, I'm so s-so-s-sor-sorry!" You're crying like an inconsolable toddler now, body is convulsing in tandem with the sobs. "I-I-I wi-wish I could take it-it-it-IT all back!"

You can't say any more words, but the wailing speaks for you just fine. Minutes pass with abandon as the two of you sway softly into the hug, Mabel rubbing your back and gently shooshing and whispering "It's okay" into your ear, and you are finally allowed to drop that heavy load you've carried about for so long.

You're free. You're finally free.

Suddenly, you're just hanging limply in your sister's arms. More time had passed than you thought, and you wonder if you could pass out from sobbing so hard. But here you are, draped over Mabel as she finishes up rubbing circles on your back while your legs tremble and your lightheadedness signals that the last of the sugar rush has burned out.

You are led to the couch after your legs finally cave. Mabel was there to catch you before you fell, and her fiancé comes forth to help.

"Hey, are you doing alright?" Dustin asks. "You're looking pale."

Blood starts to come back into your brain when you are laid down. "I'm so very hungry."

It takes no time at all before you're led to the table again and your stomach becomes filled with an over-salted TV dinner. You don't care if you hate turkey this processed and dry; Just the simple fact that your sister is feeding you anything with substance makes up for the taste a thousandfold. She also shoves some fresh leftovers into your hands for good measure, and you are ravenous enough to eat up every pasta shell on your plate. Your body feels a certain type of warm for the first time in a while, and it thanks you for that filling meal with a one-two punch of tryptophan and oxycontin.

Soon, Dustin stands up and speaks out. "Guess I'll leave you two alone now. Probably have a lot of catching up to do."

He is awkward in his exit, looking at Mabel, and then right at you, then goes to hide in the bedroom. You don't know what he was trying to convey, but Mabel pays zero heed towards that.

"Dipper, you can't even _begin_ to guess how happy I am right now! I could burst with just how happy I am that you finally came back!"

Again, she pounces you with a starving hug that you're more than happy to reciprocate. Mabel laughs so heartily that it infects you as well, and you laugh long after Mabel's giggling dies out. It's been so long since you've actually laughed like this, that when Mabel's tone makes a complete 180, it yanks you out of your contentedness and into the spotlight.

"Dip... why'd you disappear for ten years? Why didn't you ever think to come back sooner?"

These are tough questions that are now tumbling in your mind. The first one's answer is foggy. But you try to answer.

"Truth be told, Mabel, I can't remember why I ran away anymore."

"You don't remember?"

"Well, no. I mean... Wendy's death..." You tug at your jade shirt; Mabel acknowledges its existence by taking the left cuff and rolling it in her fingers. "No one really understood how isolating the experience was... I remember feeling trapped and scared and that I wanted to bail out. But when I did, when the thrill of being a runaway wore off, I was ashamed to come back. I'm sure I did a whole bunch of illegal things for cash or food or," Your hands cycle for more of a substantial answer. "Anything, really. Got messed up on a ton of different things for fun and, well, profit. Survival. I..."

"You took more drugs?!"

Mabel sounds so rightfully distressed, concerned. You don't blame her with that and when you venture to make eye contact, you see for yourself she's afraid for you. Almost, you convince yourself that she is going to reject you on this alone, but instead of Mabel moving away from your tired body, she inches closer, and holds your still outstretched hands. It's enough to encourage honest bravery from within.

"I... yeah. I did. It was a way to cope. I hated every moment living alone like that, but I wasn't sure Mom or Dad or you or anyone was gonna believe that this is me, or want me back like this." You look deeper into her eyes. "Mabel, I'm not the same Dipper that ran off."

You grimace, and are almost unwilling to tell, but you figure you'll have to sooner rather than later.

"Things happened with the drugs. I let people try new ones on me to see if they produced what they wanted, and now I can't remember or pay attention or... think as well as I used to. I could have easily gone back home at any time, but I didn't think it through and I hurt myself again and again for years because I didn't know what else to do and i-i-it hurt me. I mean, Mab-"

Your thin frame is again wrapped by arms you swore were never this comparatively large. "Dipper, you silly duck. You should know that all I wanted was to see you come back alive, and here you are. It doesn't matter right now what you've done, except that you were so determined that you came all this way just to find me. And Dipdop, you may think your mind's broken, but you managed to find me, in this huge city, on your own! Dip, that's incredible!"

"I, uhh... yeah, it kinda was." You scratch the back of your head sheepishly.

"And sure, you might not be as sharp, but you're still that determined smartypants I remember."

"Thanks, Mabel." You smile, then remember something more. "But that reminds me. About the e-mail."

Mabel's bright and overjoyed exterior shrinks back. "That was you?!"

"Yeah."

She bites her lip. "A lot of that has to do with the robbery. Dusty didn't want something like that happening again, so when we read the e-mail, I admit, we both got a little paranoid. We had a couple of crazy people asking to meet up as well. We, well... had to be careful."

"I... understand," You mutter.

"If only we trusted you sooner," Mabel's eyebrows knit together. "You looked miserable when I opened the door! And you still do! You're limping! Your clothes are _literally_ tatters! And look at all these bites! Oh my gosh, all of these are infected?! And that yellowy spot on y... oh my gosh, did you hit your head?!"

"Yeah," You lazily summate. "I kinda did."

"If we trusted that e-mail and agreed to meet up, you could've been somewhere safe and warm weeks ago instead of out on the streets suffering! I-"

"No, Mabel, I get it." You reaffirm, and now its you that's reassuring through holding hands. "Mabel, first off I'm glad you found a guy like Dustin. I don't like how much he refuses to trust me, but he protected you. I've... I've had run-ins with insane people through the years, in this city, even... probably been one of those people myself, hate to admit it... but honestly? I'm glad that you've kept yourself safe, and that you've found someone to help in that end."

She pulls her hands out of yours, just so she can place them on top. "Yeah. Dustin, when he's not nervous over everything, is a great guy. I think you two would make great friends, if you both give each other the chance."

"Highly doubt it."

Both of you smirk at that snappy response. It feels, to you, that some of your old self might still be in there after all.

"I'm sorry he treated you badly. Believe me when I say I'm going to have a long talk with him," Mabel twists her body towards the closed bedroom door and raises her voice. "And believe me when I say, Dipper, that you're welcome to stay here as long as you wish! Like, totally for real, here! The foot is down" She slowly turns back to you. "You can stay here forever if that's what you want. Heck, _I_ want you to stay forever. I don't want us to be separated ever again..."

She pulls her dining table chair up next to yours and holds onto you tightly. You return the sideways hug wordlessly, nodding to let Mabel know you agree with her completely, and that you accept the offer to live here.

Qualms bubble in your stomach about the pragmatics of the situation, how feasible it would be for Mabel and Dustin to financially support an extra mouth, but you'd rather not hear about it for the time being. Now, you're happy that you have a place to call home, and Mabel is going to fight tooth and nail to make sure Dustin doesn't change that.

Before you know it, as Mabel rattles aloud on how she can make accommodations, and what the both of you can do to get your identity back on the map, you've slumped in your seat. You try to prop your drooping head up with an arm and attempt to keep up with your sister's flurry of thoughts, but you're simply too sleepy. Mabel jolts you awake with a hand to your shoulder when she notices you're drifting off.

"Dip, what's up? Don't tell me you're getting tired already! It's not even 9 yet! We... we still need to spend the night catching up! It's been forever!"

You crack an exhausted smile. "Mabel, I've been wandering on the streets the past several weeks. It sort of does a number on your body."

Mabel is bothered that you want to go to bed so soon, and you can't blame her considering the circumstances. If it was up to her, she'd be talking to you all night long, but your eyelids are drooping and, no joke, you could sleep like a log for the next decade.

"Alright, Dipper."

"You wouldn't mind too much if I..." You belt out a yawn. "...sleep on the couch, right? You don't need to roll out the red carpet if you don't want to. I'm comfortable if I only have tha-"

"Nonsense, Dipper! Your comfort's now my top priority, and I'm not going to quit now even if you want me to!" She stands up and beelines over to her bedroom. "Wait here for just a moment!"

You can scarcely hold your attention to that little conversation Mabel and Dustin have, but Dustin does yell out a "You can't be serious, Mabel!" and "That's my pillow!" a little louder than intended. Mabel is serious, though, and she has final say on the matter, complete with with some choice words, before she returns to the main living area with a spare blanket, a fresh shirt and pajama pants, and pillow.

You have barely begun to stand when the items are shoved into your hands and Mabel scurries to the couch and reveals to you that it is a futon. She is able to convert it faster than you can comprehend, and you are ushered over, injury ignored, and made to lie down.

The clothes you are made to rapidly swap into are fresh and feel nice on your skin. The heavy blanket is thick and soft and makes you feel that utmost sense of security you haven't felt in well over ten years, and while the futon's cushions are a little harder than you like, to your tired bones it is still like a cloud. Without intending, a soft, dopey, satisfied sigh coupled with an equally dumb grin pops up and greatly pleases your sister.

"You comfortable, Dip?"

"Most comfortable I've been in a long time."

She laughs self-satisfactorily. "I will take that as a yes. Another happy customer of Mabel's bed and breakfast!"

You chuckle weakly and close your eyes. "It's like you haven't changed at all..."

You drop towards sleep so quickly that you never hear Mabel's joking retort but, drifting off, you are able to sense her warm presence and it clouds your already dreaming mind with saccharine, gentle, calm thoughts. You're barely roused when Mabel leans in to rub your shoulder and wish you goodnight. Your dreams are of pure happiness, and in a good way you hope they never end.

You're finally, _finally_ home.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's not quite the end just yet. There's still two chapters left to tell.


	23. Heart

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've written the last scene for this chapter and the ending like five different times because I couldn't figure out what I wanted at all.
> 
> Except feels. I wanted that.

_"Dipper, come outside! I have something really cool to show you!"_

_You've been busy attempting to solve a puzzle in your video game for well over an hour, and you're completely honest with yourself in that you don't want any distractions from your task while you lay on the couch._

_"Dipper, come on!" She whines. "Do I have to drag your butt out here? Please! It'll only take a minute!"_

_You huff tiredly, close your handheld system and set it gently on the end-table. You hope that this is something absolutely amazing as you make your way outside via the front door._

_Colorful streams of green, sticky silly string hit you in the face, and you fall over backwards from the surprise assault. Mabel is holding two cans of the stuff in her hands, while Dad looks on from his lawn-chair with a devious smile on his face. You suspect he's the reason for all this._

_Mabel sprays you with the other can, this one bearing a purple substance, and laughs hard. "Try to catch me!"_

_She darts off into the yard, and at first you run after her simply to play along, though each successive stride is made with greater purpose as your dour mood rises like a balloon. Soon you've tackled her down and snatched the green can from her grasp, and with a smile and a laugh you spray the gunk all over her hair. She retaliates with the purple stuff._

_The two of you turn red from the exertion in the blazing heat and from all the laughing, only to stop at your Dad's request while he snaps a photo of this moment from the camera he'd brought outside with him._

\---

The smell of coffee enters your nostrils and this anchor tugs you back into a world that is much warmer and caring than what you've experienced in a long, long time. It is that warmth that helps keep your memory from glitching out and dropping much of your personal history as you waken. Eyes open, and you shift around on the futon to see who is in the kitchen area making this fresh pot.

Dustin stands impatiently in front of the coffee machine with his arms folded. He hears your rousing and locks tired eyes onto yours.

"Morning."

"G-good morning." You stutter.

It is quiet save for the steady flow of brewing coffee filling the pot. The apartment becomes less inviting by the second, the longer the silence reigns. Dustin doesn't appear to be any more comfortable with your presence, and his defensive and angular body language clues you in that he might've expected you and several expensive objects to have vanished in the middle of the night.

"D'you want a cup?" He asks suddenly, his voice venturing close to a bark.

"Uh... sure."

You hobble out of bed on your aching ankle to use the bathroom, then situate yourself at the kitchen table to wait for your coffee. Dustin slides into a chair opposite of yours and hands you your mug, which you leave aside to let cool.

You can't help but feel uncomfortable under Dustin's judgmental gaze. It's obvious to you that he hasn't been wholly convinced of your genuinity the longer this little staring contest drags on. He makes an audible exhale, gets up, and walks over to the thin bookshelf against the wall space between an outside corner and his and Mabel's bedroom, and returns to his seat with a blue scrapbook with your name written ever-so-neatly on the cover.

"Mabel said she made this not too long after the search was called off." Dustin methodically scans each page one at a time, comparing the facial details of your young, chubby face to your current, ghastly embodiment. "Said she really needed something to do to to cope with the loss. We went to the same school, and for a long time since first meeting her she'd lug this around in her backpack."

"Please," You swallow hard. "If you're trying to guilt trip me, I-"

Dustin doesn't even hear. "She liked talking to it, though always in secret so no one would think she was crazy. I'd catch her sometimes, but she'd always deny it." He flips past a page full of Halloween costumes. "But I knew she loved her brother so much that she'd do anything to bring him back." This page contains school photos. "Not too long after we moved here, I suggested that she'd try looking for him." These are pictures from various summer vacations. "If it turned out he had died, I told her, at least then we'd know and could give him a damn proper funeral. And, if he was alive, we'd do whatever it took to bring him home."

You have to do something to quell the intense pangs of shame in your heart, so you burn your mouth with a swig of coffee. This physical pain hurts like hell, yet it does nothing to distract you from your turmoil.

"Dipper?"

You shoot your gaze up to your sister's fiancé, then notice he stopped on a page that has a missing poster permanently glued in with, as far as your loved ones know, your last known photograph, the day Stan took you two out to the diner. You look so very tired, and Mabel looks so very chipper. Another look at Dustin and his expression towards you has changed towards a more apologetic tone.

"Sorry I treated you like shit since you got here." His face hardens subtly. "I hope you get why I needed to be suspicious."

"Because you were robbed?"

He shakes his head. "Not so much that. I just don't want to see Mabel get hurt again."

You nod. "I get that. To be honest, I would've done the same."

Dustin tents his fingers. "So, I must ask. Now that you're finally here. Why did you run away? You wanted to make sure to hurt her one last time like an idiot after all the crap you put her through?"

"What? No!"

You need to control yourself before you wake up the neighbors, let alone Mabel, at six in the morning. Dustin has accepted you as Dipper, but that only means he now knows where to direct his animosity towards. It certainly has put his attitude towards you during this conversation into context.

"Then what?"

"Well, I," Dustin grabs his mug of coffee and after his tentative sip places the mug back down, and you continue. "Um... honestly, it's all foggy. I don't know what exactly happened that made me decide to leave, but I get the feeling that I didn't feel like anyone really got what I was going through, if that makes sense. I don't think even Mabel really understood, but I don't think that was the reason. Back then, I just felt ashamed at myself for the things I was doing."

"She told me that you'd gotten in with some bad friends and started drinking and doing drugs."

"Yeah, I just... At first it felt like I needed a break from my life. I... I was getting really stressed out and needed to unwind and distance myself. Once the excitement wore off though, it all felt like another huge mistake. Then, as I kept going, I added more and more things to be ashamed of. It got harder and harder to want to show my face." You burn your mouth again with more coffee. "I'd just come back and be such an amazing disappointment, after everything I had achieved and all that was going for me as a kid. I mean, returning carrying around a gas container? Pills? Stiff whiskey? Having no real accomplishments to speak of other than abusing all these drugs? Surviving being homeless for months at a time? Going against my moral code again and again? Breaking the law for food? I-it's... I can't... I couldn't do it. They'd all be so disappointed."

The kitchen is silent, save for the gentle hum of the refrigerator. Dustin drums his fingers into the table, and you allow him to make the next move, as you've said all that could be said. It would be no surprise if he latches onto the fact that you are a drug addict; More specifically, an addict for escapism. Addict of running away. Ironically, you down more coffee to escape the crushing weight Dustin's steeled, thinking, judgmental eyes that are bearing down on you. 

"I see." He finally acknowledges. "You didn't want your folks to be disgusted the longer you kept making mistakes."

"Yeah, Dustin."

He takes another sip of coffee. "You know, after you fell dead asleep, Mabel went and called your parents."

Your eyes petrify in place. "H-how did they react?"

Dustin scoffs and shakes his head with a sly grin. "Man, they were overjoyed. At first they couldn't believe it, but when Mabel went and took that picture of you asleep and sent it to them, they had to both be crying the way they sounded on her computer. Your mother knew your face immediately, like they always say."

Your shoulder blades unknot, and you softly smile. "That's... I couldn't have asked for a better reaction. I wasn't sure if they would have wanted to speak to me. Guess I'll have to give them a call today." You rub your chin. "Reminds me, I should call Soos and thank him. If he had never stopped by my gas station, I would've still been working there, thinking that'd be the best I could do."

"Soos? That big guy?" Dustin shakes his head while you nod yours. "Okay, now I have to believe that you're Dipper. Mabel called him right after your parents, and he practically went nuts when that picture was sent. Christ, didn't think the world was this small."

"You'd be amazed, Dustin."

"Sure would." Dustin glances towards a wall, and all the feathery lightness in his alto drops. "You know, I think Mabel's gonna want to wake up much earlier than normal for a Saturday, just for you, but look. She loves you as much, maybe even more than me, but she's also means everything to me. I don't want you breaking her heart, okay? I won't tolerate that shit."

Now it's your turn to drum your fingers. "I don't plan on doing that ever again. But," You groan. "Even I know something could happen that might... I... resolve not to run away, Dustin. I mean that both literally and figuratively, alright? I've learned that I can't do that anymore. It leads to more problems and it'll always feedback into itself. But..."

"Yeah?" Dustin sounds either impatient or anticipatory. You can't tell. "Go on."

"I'm gonna have to not feel alone for that to work. And I've felt more or less alone for so many years that I became convinced that's how I would live my life." Now it's your turn to glare at Dustin. "I understand I shouldn't do anything to hurt Mabel from here on out. I love her so much that I'm gonna try my best to be the best Dipper I can be. But, I just want to not feel abandoned if and when I fuck up."

Dustin is sneering a little, but he isn't certain of what to say, it looks like. He's thinking with the burden of cognitive dissonance in his head. "Well, Dipper..."

"Gooood morning!"

Mabel's enthusiastic greeting startles her soon-to-be husband and he shoots his spine up straight right as she enters into the common area. "M-morning, Mabes!"

"Hey, Mabel," You smile. "Sleep well?"

"Dipper, if this is has all been a dream, I don't wanna wake up!"

Her rosy smile is something that you've missed, and after she pecks Dustin with a brief kiss, Mabel practically lifts you up by your armpits for a long embrace so full of love that your pensive feelings are hijacked and melts into a calm punctuated by the heavy, steady thrum of your strong, caffeinated heartbeat. You have to return the hug as powerfully as you're receiving it. It'd feel wrong not to.

"How'd you sleep?" Mabel asks into your collarbone.

"Slept great."

"Well, duh, why wouldn't you? And I'm gonna make sure you're gonna eat great, too." She breaks away from you and pulls out various bowls, cups, utensils and ingredients from nearly every cabinet and the fridge. You're gracious, but you don't want to feel like you're taking advantage.

"Mabel, I really appreciate that you're doing this, b-"

She's not having it, and pauses in the middle of her half-prepared pancake batter. "Dipper, you came back into my life homeless, dirty and starving. You're welcome to stay here as long as you want, but you're gonna have to pack on the pounds ASAP."

"What?" You half throw up your arms and smirk. "I don't look _that_ much like a skeleton!"

Dustin snickers. "A zombie, maybe."

"What? No, shut up!"

"Hell yeah, a zombie. You got the bum ankle making you shuffle about. Don't think I didn't notice that."

You drink more coffee. "But it should heal back up in a few days. Just gotta not walk around if I don't need to and make sure it's supported. It's nothing to worry about, and think of it this way: It'll give me time to figure out what to do next, get some basic research done..."

"Woah, and you were saying last night how you weren't the same Dipper than before?" Mabel ribs.

You blush a little. "It's possible I might have been off on that. But yeah. That stuff and, you know, calling family. Mom and Dad. Um... is Stan and, uh, Ford...?"

"Both still kicking and feisty as ever!"

She said both, and you smile. "That's great to hear."

"First time I met Stan he nearly crushed my hand." Dustin says point-blank. "Geezer has a hell of a handshake. Also, pretty sure he stole twenty bucks."

"Whaat? Stan? Never, Dusty!" 

You hear the sarcasm your sister's saying, and join in. "Mabel, Grunkle Stan would shoplift in front of us all the time."

She laughs. "Noo... well, yeah."

You finish off your cup of coffee, and stand up to hover over your sister's shoulder for the right moment to dip your finger into the pancake batter to taste. Mabel jumps and smacks you lightly in the face. You couldn't help it; Being in a place that you can actually call home is making you feel younger. Your gaunt face feels fuller and livelier. The happy atmosphere tickles your sensibilities in such a way that you've scarcely had them tickled in the decade before.

This is what home feels like. Standing here smelling the warming smells of cozy breakfast foods and coffee with your sister and her fiancé at the table behind you, overjoyed by your presence in their lives. Mabel now has her other biological half in her life once more, and Dustin, as far as you know, is warming up to you. At least, he is happy to see his soon-to-be wife so ecstatic.

When you close your eyes you feel this loving, warming glow intensify ten-fold. You have to let yourself bask in this endless glory; it is all just too perfect not to indulge yourself. Your life could stay exactly the way it is in this very point in time forever and it would still be perfect. And in the white light behind your life's curtains, you can see her, of all people, leaning on nothing.

Wendy sees you, and waves with a welcoming smile. You realize that you have to look silly to them doing this, but you lift up your arm to wave at your long-departed friend, and a huge smile creeps up your face as she starts walking towards you with a welcoming, outstretched hand. Ecstatic from this accepting gesture, you reach out towards her until the two of you are hand-in-hand. Intense sparks of green eyes that are able to tell you that you have no more load left to carry, and that you can now float easily, gaze into your subdued brown, and her beautiful warmth permeates your body and soul until your life feels utterly complete.

\---

"Dipper? Dipper, wake up! Wake up, Dipper, please! Please, Dipper, wake up!"

"C'mon, man, don't do this to us!"

You feel a light rapping on your left cheek, and you don't know how you got here, but you're on the floor of the apartment. Your eyes see nothing when you open them except for twin dark, blurry figures in a sea of pitch, and lethargically, you wiggle your hands and feet in synchronization with a soft moan and a blind grazing of the shag carpeting with dull fingertips.

"Oh my God, Dipper!!" Mabel lifts you up in a tight embrace. "What on Earth happened?! Are you dying?! Oh God, please don't die, Dipper! You only came back yesterday! I... I can't stand losing you again!"

"What?" You start to sense pain, and it rings hard in your chest and ankle. "I'm..."

The other shadow lifts your wrist and places several fingers on a vein. "His heartbeat's still crazy irregular, Mabel."

Oh.

Oh no.

As your vision returns to you, and you see Mabel's reddened, moist face, you're starting to realize the horrible truth about your heart. Something you've been minding whenever it groaned, yet ignoring the implications of what the increasing fatigue meant for a later date. Now, of all the times, it was sending its dire warning. It couldn't have been more than eight or nine months since the incident with that particular concoction; For a 26-year-old, your heart simply shouldn't be free-falling like this.

For the first time, you're truly afraid that your heart might be dying. And, for the first time in a long time, you don't want to die.

"I really need to get to a hospital." You breathe. "There's... my heart's been getting worse for months."

"What? How? You're in your twenties!" Dustin sputters, vitriolic. "Your heart shouldn't be doing that!"

"Dipper, what happened?" Mabel whispers.

You lift yourself into a seated position without assistance, and haltingly look your sister in the eye. "It's... well, can we just go to the hospital and when they ask how I... explain then?"

Mabel is shocked and ready to argue until her face turns blue at your simple request, but Dustin places a well-timed hand on her shoulder and squeezes it. "Mabes, I want to know too, but I think there's no time to argue. We have to get him to a doctor now."

You're struggling to stand up between the dizziness, your ankle, and the strained beating in your chest. Dustin and Mabel lay you down by the shoulders, the former commanding that you not exert yourself in this state, and the latter, Mabel, asking if they should either get an ambulance or a cab.

"What? Mabel, your brother is in no shape to walk downstairs to a cab. He needs an ambulance!"

"I'll be fine." You vocalize before Mabel has a chance to fight with her fiancé. "We can get a cab. I think I can make it there if I only stand when I have to, and it might be faster. I'd rather get there fast."

You really try to stand up, but first your ankle rings out in what is objectively the worst pain yet from the appendage, surprising you and triggering the worst pain ever in your life hitting you square in the heart. You shout out, clutch your chest, then collapse on your side from your half-standing position.

"Oh God. Oh shit!" Dustin whips out his phone and dials rapidly, his voice growing more distant with each word. "Shit! Make sure he doesn't lose consciousness, Mabel!"

Someone, you assume Mabel, rolls you onto your back. It's getting hard to see again. It's also becoming hard to breathe; Or rather, that precious oxygen isn't getting into your head. You place a hand over your chest and attempt to massage your heart into a more stable, fuller rhythm, but it's futile, and you're gasping for air while your sick organ has a massive, arrhythmic fit.

"Dipper? Dipper, what's...?!"

"Can't breathe." You rale. "Blood's not flowing. Heart..."

You think Mabel pulls her hands up over her mouth, beyond terrified at the scene before her. You roll your eyes back into your skull and shut them tightly. This all hurts so much. Your ankle has to be broken by now, your heart is failing, and most of all, you can't bear to see your sister traumatized by all of this.

You suppose she became desperate and began doing chest compressions, by the sudden series of palms crushing your ribs, and you've enough ability starting out to help by slowing down your breathing and making the breaths go as deep as your lungs can handle.

Hell of a role reversion on your end.

Unlike your first lapse from consciousness, this one is darker. You don't hallucinate, nor is anyone waiting in that beyond. You want to hang onto the world you're in now, forcing your eyes open first, then struggling to keep them open as Dustin and Mabel's panicked encouragements are telling you to.

But it's hard. So very hard. You fail, and you fall into the murky blackness, frightened you're never going to emerge before the oblivion takes over.


	24. Phoenix

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, this is it. The last chapter. I really have to thank you all that have read, commented, left kudos. This has been the most popular fic I've written for this fandom, and this was one of the most fun and challenging things I've written, and I could not have done this without you guys. All I hope is that this final installment, that I must have written and rewritten half a dozen times, serves as a proper ending.
> 
> Thank you for reading, and plans for what I'm thinking about doing after will come after the end.

You're alive. Honest to God, you are alive.

It's like a miracle to you that you're standing here, in this ascending elevator. Mabel has a protective hand sprawled across your slumped, tired back, but you're just strong enough to make short trips about with the pair of crutches the hospital gave you.

There's a slight murmur in your chest, but it can't make your heartbeat as downright ill as it used to. Your heart is currently still weakened from its crisis, and even after the work ahead of you to make it as healthy and strong as it can be it's going to need these heart medications and pacemaker for life. But, you're forever grateful that you're slated to live for a long time.

It doesn't matter to you that the reason for the near-fatal arrhythmia was that by drinking the impossibly strong coffee Dustin had offered it overloaded your weakened, stressed heart. You suspect that, if you had left the apartment and not take your own life, it would have happened anyway, eventually, out of grief alone.

Consciousness was in constant flux until you fully awoke later in the day, as was your memory in the days after. The doctors must've had a blast rescheduling all of those tests for your heart to fit in all those tests for your brain on top of tending your other health issues and still give you your ample time to rest.

Your immune system had a harder time fighting off the infection brought on by the bug bites, but managed to take the upper hand, and while despite not being active and thus unable to gain lean weight, your body has at least been thoroughly nourished.

When you woke up that afternoon Mabel was right by your side, and after breathing relief that you were awake gave you the muted news that the doctors would get you well, and that you were going to be mostly okay, most likely. Mabel quietly added something that sounded like a dig at you, but you couldn't ask for her to repeat in time before she chewed you out. You just couldn't keep your gaze on your sister, instead opting to stare at the heart monitor, but you heard every word she seethed. She was disappointed, and angry, and scared.

She demanded to know every little thing you had taken, and you don't want to lie to her, and so you list off the ones you can remember, whether they were merely done a single time, you had a fling with them, or became hooked. For each affirmation Mabel got more upset and violent in her words. It didn't matter if you told her, outside of alcohol, you were only currently entrenched with Neon; Mabel wiped bitter tears regardless in the end.

As it turns out, you talked more to Dustin during your stay than Mabel. After her yelling fit at you, she still stuck around, but rarely spoke, which in turn left you feeling abandoned and like a complete fuck-up idiot of a brother. You decided you deserved it. For the first time, Dustin gave you support, hinting that Mabel couldn't stay mad for long. He smiled and reassured you of this fact.

A whole week off of your ankle, which was looked at thoroughly, given scans and X-rays, then attached to a stiff boot. The bounding up the stairs and the collapse had torn a ligament, and it's forecasted it's going to take several months to fully heal this time around.

It was ten days that you stayed in the hospital, hooked up to heart monitors, being administered, one way or another, tests, medicine, and on the penultimate day, going under and coming to feeling relief in your chest. Between the pacemaker and the medicine, it was the first time in months your heart felt this stable.

It's surreal when you are released and Mabel and Dustin take you back to their apartment. You realized, as you swung your body inside with your crutches, that this is your home now. All of the places you lived in, minus when you lived with others, mostly, were emaciated wrecks of third-hand furniture and belongings cobbled together and picked off from curbsides, with the occasional new purchase dotting those normally bug-infested studios. Here, you can tell that, while mostly second-hand, the furniture has been well-cared for, much like the apartment space they inhabit.

You wonder if you're going to be given base rules and strict talking-tos when Mabel makes you sit down on the futon. Worry creeps up your spine when the thought she would only let you stay until your ankle heals leaks in. Up until that incident, you never thought she could be that spiteful, but you assume anyone would be reactive to such a prolific drug usage history after a serious medical emergency.

Instead, Mabel returns from her bedroom, smiling, and hands you a large boxed present.

"What's this?"

Mabel sheepishly chuckles. "It's a homecoming present, doofus. A couple of things I kinda thought you'd want to have to feel like you're a part of this family." She looks down. "I kinda messed up a little back there."

You understand both intentions of this gift, and your heart warms from them. "Mabel, you and I both know I should be the one saying that."

"But I made it look like I just tossed you out, like I didn't want to bother helping you. I know you came to me because you wanted to start over with yourself. I got scared, and I want to say I'm sorry."

You smile; For now, you want to show her appreciation. "Thanks, Mabel. Hearing that really does mean a lot to me, and I'm sorry too."

Mabel places her gentle hand on your shoulder, and with another coaxes your hands to the top of the present. "Apology accepted. Now open it!"

You open up the gift, tearing away the obnoxiously sparkly wrapping paper and pulling apart the box flaps to reach a new-in-package comforter. "Oh man, this is great. It's even blue."

"Keep going!"

There's more? You put the comforter to the side and pull out a trimmed receipt for a new mattress. "Mabel, are you telling me I'm getting a bed?"

"Not just a bed, but a whole room." Dustin says. "Bed frame, dresser, desk... all second-hand, but they look decent. We're gonna have to rearrange the living room for Mabel's art and prep it so the landlord doesn't kill us if glitter, paint, or glitter paint gets everywhere, though."

"The man doesn't appreciate the process that is my toil!" Mabel shakes a fist down to the floor below. "You hear that?! My toil!"

"No, he doesn't." Dustin laughs. "He's kind of a jerk like that."

You pull out more gifts from the box. There are new sets of clothes, jeans, and some old things that Mabel reminds you are yours when you appear confused to their presence. Neither of you wish to linger for long on the implications right now; Tomorrow, definitely, because you have an appointment with a head doctor, but not today. These objects, a handheld game system, some DVDs, your favorite novels and comics, and even more clothes in particular all have the same musky smell to them, and Mabel tells you they had been in storage for years on the other side of the country.

You're beside yourself in warm fuzzy happiness from the deeper meaning in those words.

Finally, you reach the very bottom of the box, and pull out a much smaller box. Carefully, you pull the top portion off, and smile by what you see. First, there is a wallet, and by some of the scuff marks, appears lightly used, but is in much better shape than your old one. When you lift the object out, a key falls from the inside fold and onto the floor.

You pick it up and examine it. "What's this?"

"It's the spare key to the apartment, Dip!"

You marvel at the ridges that make up the blade. "Really? I can actually stay here?"

"Doy! When did I say you couldn't? Wasn't the room enough of a hint? You're welcome to stay here as long as you want! You can be an uncle for five years and still be living with us. We can totally make that work if it makes you the happiest Dipper you can be."

"But," You suddenly realize. "My hospital bills. They're gonn-"

"Don't worry about it!"

"These things... I can't-"

"Dipper, please! I got it handled." Mabel smiles sweetly. "I know, it's gonna be a little hard making ends meet right now, but trust me, people pay crazy amounts for paintings sometimes. It's happened to me before, it'll happen again. And besides, you'll never be a burden. You know what you are instead, though?"

You're uneasy. "What?"

Mabel gently pushes you in your seat. "My little brother, you big doof!"

"Five minutes does not count!" Your protest comes with a laugh.

"It does so!"

You see Dustin shake his head and chuckle at this little scene. "Oh boy. Thought Mabel on her own was going to be enough fun. Help me, God."

The air feels much cleaner in the apartment now, and you can breathe easy. You don't care how playfully sarcastic Dustin is in the moment. You look back down to the small box, and notice one last thing, nestled at the very bottom.

It's a crisp, clean version of the sibling picture you'd carried around all these years. It's lifted out of the box and you turn it over; You're greeted with your own signature: Dipper Pines. You glance up at Mabel, questioning yet becoming overwhelmed in a certain type of resplendent happiness.

"I can take the other one back if you want. Looked like you needed yours back."

"Yeah... yeah, absolutely." You give the dumbest grin. "Thank you so much. For everything."

The hug you lock into with Mabel completes you.

"Welcome home, Dipper."

Your name is Dipper Pines, and you live with your sister and her fiancé in a massive city in New York. You're ready to start over, one last time.

\--- 

The End

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So I've been thinking: What's next?
> 
> I would love to work on my original novel, for starters. It's been real slow going with that, and while it's been taking form, it's been doing so very slowly, and I'd like to work on that a little more.
> 
> I also would want to maybe retool the basic plot for this fic into something original as well. To be honest, this would make an interesting visual novel, but whether I'll actually chase that idea further or not is still up in the air. Mainly because I don't like the idea of making a visnov from a prefab program, but I have no idea how to code, either.
> 
> But also, what is next for Dipper and Mabel now they're back together? I'd really love to explore that in a multiple short story anthology format. Good times, bad times, maybe just times in general where they just sit in front of the TV eating breakfast cereal and watching streams of old Sat AM cartoons. Experiment around with storytelling techniques. Maybe even have it as a collab if at all possible. Really, this would be a fun project to work on and I might even have the first "short story" (relative since I am not good with keeping it all that short) written down in full soonish. I mean I have dozens of ideas but it's difficult to work on all of them at once, so I'm gonna have to focus on one.
> 
> So, with that, let me know what you think! If you want to talk to me about the collab idea, the story or just about anything in general I am all ears. And with that, I'll be seeing you guys soon.

**Author's Note:**

> PS fic title proves I am hopeless [Mountain Goats](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rUbFljMLIY8) trash.


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